


Back to Prison

by Hinn_Raven



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Captivity, Character Death, Dark, Darkest Timeline Wash, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mercenaries, Nightmares, Prison, Rivalry, Solitary Confinement, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-07-06 10:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15884421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: The Tartarus makes good things hard to hang onto. So when a couple of mercenaries offer Wash his freedom, he can’t help but think it’s worth whatever price they might ask. Even if it brings him into direct conflict with the Reds and Blues once again.Mercenary Wash AU.





	1. Voyage of the Damned

**Author's Note:**

> YO, WHO'S READY FOR SOME ANGST? 
> 
> Okay so I've always kind of wanted to write a mercenary Wash AU, but I've never really had the right idea... and then I encountered jomeimei421's amazing [Merc art](https://jomeimei421.tumblr.com/post/173665704483/you-ever-think-about-what-mightve-happened-to)on Tumblr, and I mentioned I had ideas, and then they drew [MORE Merc art](https://jomeimei421.tumblr.com/post/177461266778/secretlystephaniebrown-slams-this-down-here) (if you click the link you'll get some spoilers for this fic) and so then I HAD TO. 
> 
> Angst fic means warnings! So let's get started.
> 
> Warnings for: Imprisonment, violence, solitary confinement and issues stemming from that, character death (for who, check the end notes).

The ceiling of his cell on the Tartarus is a familiar, almost comforting shade of grey. He wants to pull it closer to himself sometimes, to wrap himself in it, a protective layer between him and the rest of the world.

And then the bars slide open for yard time, and Wash is reminded, once again, of how he hasn’t been protected for a long time.

Only certain cell blocks are allowed out at the same time, and Wash drags his feet as he leaves his cell. His cellmate, at least, knows better than to try anything. Wash had ensured that the lesson had stuck, one black eye at a time over the months (years?) of their journey.

Wash has long since lost track of time. Time means nothing on the Tartarus, where yard time depends on how generous the warden is feeling, if Stasney has a stomach bug, or how many guards are currently on staff. There’s no sun to track the days, and Wash has lost track of how many days (weeks?) he’s spent in the infirmary, unable to count meals.

He’s given up on that. It doesn’t matter anyways. There’s nothing to count _for_. The days on the Tartarus stretch on and on, forever, his cruise lasting until he dies or until some judge decides he’s reformed enough for a prison colony somewhere, where nothing waits for him but backbreaking labor and a slightly larger cell.

It's a voyage of the damned, and Wash is just one passenger, trapped here as effectively as the rest of them.

The only things left to count are his stints in solitary, all ten of them, of impossibly long stretches that left Wash with nothing but Epsilon’s screams ringing in his ears, in tandem with Alpha’s indignant protestations, the Meta’s grunts, and Lavernius Tucker’s voice.

_“Leave him! Caboose, get away from that guy! He killed Church, remember?”_

Leave him to the snow, to handcuffs, to the machines that stripped away armor and exposed flesh, to the Tartarus, to prison bars, to _nothing_.

Long, endless stretches of nothing.

The prison yard doesn’t deserve the name yard. It’s just another wide, empty looking stretch of steel and concrete, with a vague track for running painted along the edge, and a handful of raised squares of concrete that serve as tables and chairs. White panels line the ceiling, letting artificial sunlight pour over the prisoners, providing them with much needed vitamin D. There was a basketball, once, but one of the prisoners had shredded it ages ago and tried to force-feed the pieces to a guard, so they don’t get basketballs anymore.

Wash avoids the groups that are starting to cluster around the blocks, intending to stretch his legs by pacing the length of the room.

A hand, muscled and strong, lands on the back of Wash’s neck and squeezes, and Wash can’t help the sharp, sudden exhale of air.

 _Damn_.

He twists, trying to get away from the smell of cigarette smoke and rotting fish, and he throws his elbow back, hoping to catch his attacker in the ribs, hoping to be able to get free before anything worse happens.

His arm is caught and twisted up behind his back, the angle harsh and unforgiving as the man forcing it there.

“Hello _Washington_ ,” Sharkface hisses in his ear, and Wash curses himself for letting the man get the drop on him. He’d gotten sloppy, assumed that not seeing Sharkface on his initial sweep of the yard had meant that the man hadn’t been allowed out today, and now he’s going to pay for it.

The rest of the prison yard avoids them—Insurrectionists and Freelancers are equally unpopular, on this ship of deserters, madmen, and terrorists. The long-standing feud between the two of them is insular, singular, isolated from the rest of the prison politics.

Some days, as Sharkface digs his fingers into Wash’s neck hard enough to make it hard to breathe, it almost makes Wash wish he’d taken Price’s offer of protection.  

Almost.

He kicks, and this time he makes contact, and he gasps for air, before pivoting, keeping his face blank as he spins to fight the familiar fight.

He spots Price, watching, from the chess board in the corner, where he usually lurks. Of course Wash has to deal with _both_ of them, today. It’d be too much to hope, for a day of peace, of being able to walk the perimeter in solitude, soaking up the artificial sunlight, savoring the freedom to stretch his legs.

Wash misses the sunlight. He misses his armor. He misses the feeling of a gun in his hands. He misses feeling in control.

He hasn’t been in control for a long, long time. Hasn’t even been allowed the luxury of pretending, either.

Wash and Sharkface get in only a few blows before they’re dragged apart by the guards, and Wash waits for a few, horrifying moments, before someone declares that Sharkface started it, and they drag him off to solitary.

Wash gets thrown back into the cell to nurse his bloody nose and his bruises, but at least here, there’s light, and he doesn’t have to touch the walls unless he wants to.

He lays down on his cot and stares at the ceiling, and when he dreams, he dreams of snow, and grey armor, and the sound the Meta made as he plunged off the cliff.

Sharkface is still in solitary, the next time they let Wash out.  

Price is there, though, waiting for him. He sits calmly, in Wash’s line of sight, not threatening, not provoking, just… present.

Always present.

A reminder that Wash can’t run from his past, no matter how often he tries.

Price has new lackies—a woman with a grin, stretched wide by scars, with muscles like cords of steel, and a skinny, blank eyed man who cleans his nails openly with a shiv.

Wash skirts Price and his minions—Price will send his people to him if Price really wants to talk. The one advantage of prison is that Price no longer has speakers or video screens. It gives Wash at least the illusion of space, the illusion that he can escape the man.

He goes to find Chrissie, a mean faced woman who bombed a civilian colony and laughed during her trial and trades her his ration of cigarettes—provided for the prisoners because if they die of cancer, they cost the UNSC that much less money living out their life sentences—in exchange for three new toothbrushes for him to carve down into weapons of his own.

“Terrence still giving you trouble, Washington?” Chrissie’s eyes are a strange, almost sickly shade of purple. It reminds him of Theta, in the right light. Her eyes aren’t natural, according to the rumors. Drugs or experiments or surgery or aliens—the stories vary, and she probably started all of them herself.

Wash shrugs instead of speaking. Chrissie deals with information as well as physical contraband, and Wash knows there are enough people on the Tartarus interested in him that anything he tells her is worth something, and Wash is petty enough to keep that from her.

“Suit yourself,” she says, lighting one of Wash’s cigarettes and blowing the smoke in his face. “You should really take Price up on his offer, though. One of these days, Sharkface is going to bribe the right guards, and then you’re a corpse.”

Wash almost tells her that’s not going to happen—there’s a handful of politicians who still live in hope that they can drag more information about Freelancer out of his brain—but thinks better of it. _That_ kind of information would give Chrissie far too much, and there’s nothing in it for Wash.

He does resolve to trade his cigarettes to someone else next time, though. If Price has won over Chrissie, he’s less safe than he realized. Price is circling, planning something, and Wash has been involved in Price’s plans often enough to know that he’s not safe when Price is planning something.

That night, he has nightmares of that voice, of blood on snow, of the taste of ozone as an EMP races through his armor.

They pick up more prisoners, and a handful of others disappear, destined for a colony somewhere, or just shoved out an airlock. Wash gets thrown into an interrogation room and is asked questions about Freelancer by a blank screen.

_“Tell us about the Epsilon A.I.”_

_“Tell us about the Director’s last known location.”_

_“Tell us about Agent Carolina, tell us about Agent Texas, tell us about the Simulation Troopers, tell us about your childhood—”_

His answers aren’t good enough, though, because at the end of the day, he’s in solitary again. (His answers have never been good enough.)

Maybe in some parts of the universe, solitary is banned, but the Tartarus isn’t civilized, and it’s barely even legal. Wash has no rights, here in this floating prison, this cruise ship of the damned and the dying. No conventions apply to the prisoners here and Wash even more so than the rest of the prisoners, because he doesn’t even have a name, doesn’t even have family to petition on his behalf.

Agent Washington is a file with more questions than answers, a blank slate to confuse and frustrate the world, and maybe it’s safer that way, but it comes at a cost.

Like this: his eleventh time in solitary.

He raps eleven out on the wall, a rhythm to try to give him _something_ to do.

He lists all fifty states and their causes of death, he lists all the A.I. and how the Meta obtained them. He lists all the people he wants to kill, and their last known locations.

When he dreams, it’s of the sting of needles in the back of his neck, of Epsilon fragmenting in his mind, of Allison’s smile, and the heat of the Texas sun on his face.

He screams when he wakes, and nothing changes, because of course it doesn’t. The guards don’t care about screaming. The guards don’t care about him.

Meals pass, and the nightmares start to blur together. Wash hallucinates Michael Caboose with his out of date helmet, cheerfully lecturing him about the importance of brushing his teeth.

He dreams of that god-awful polka music that the Red Team’s warthog played as it crushed his ribs. He thinks about the satisfying feeling of bullets going into pink Simulation armor, and how he’s going to do it again, to the rest of them, until they’re the ones left in the snow, left for the Chairman to find, to reject, to be _disappointed in_.

He thinks he’s been left in here longer than usual. His fingernails are filed down to stubs and his throat is hoarse from screaming. He hadn’t screamed in solitary since the first time.

He dreams of Carolina, of her cocky laugh, of a flash of red hair, of the sting of paint as she shoots him in the ribs, then lectures him about it.

The door opens, and Wash throws his hands over his eyes, and looks up into unfamiliar, painful brightness, which eventually softens into unfamiliar armor.

“ _Hello_ ,” says a man in steel-and-orange. “What’s this?”

“I thought we were told there was no one in solitary,” the second man says, in charcoal and gunmetal-green.

Something’s… wrong. These aren’t guards. The armor is too high a quality, and all the guards know him, they say his name with mockery and bitterness, angry that they’ve never been able to figure out the name he was born with, never been able to beat it out of him or find it out through interrogation.

Wash thinks about the alarms he’d heard go off a while ago, alarms he’d dismissed as hallucinations of the Mother of Invention crashing, and he finds himself feeling a flare of hope, for the first time in… well.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been here for. Not on the Tartarus, not in solitary.

Time hasn’t meant anything in a long while.

He gets to his feet.

“I’m Agent Washington,” he says, even though the word “agent” is sour in his mouth. “Formerly of Project Freelancer. How can I help you?”

Both men turn to each other, and Wash _has them_ , he can _tell_. They’re interested, they’re intrigued, they’re… something. And they’re not guards. Pirates, maybe, looking for recruits, or something else that Wash can’t even begin to conceive, his mind as addled as it is from confinement.

“Oh, this will be interesting.”

Wash is allowed to shower, to shave, to eat and drink, and then he meets up with Felix and Locus (as his new saviors are called) again in one of the rooms, to talk about his future.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen now, but he does know this.

Hope is bitter on his tongue, the promise of… _something_ hovering in the air, and Wash will chase it as far as he can.

Day one.

He has a reason to count again.

Wash grins to himself as he stares at his reflection in the mirror, eyes lost in a sea of dark circles, scars crossing his face like roads on a map, and hair unkempt.

But he doesn’t care how he looks.

He can fight, and Felix and Locus will know this soon enough.

It’s time to sell his soul to the devil again, and maybe he’ll be feeling sunlight on his face and armor against his skin sooner rather than later.

Chrissie catches him by the arm as he steps out of the bathroom.

“A freebee, Washington,” she says, grinning. Her strange purple eyes look different in the dim hallways, rather than in the bright artificial light of the prison yard. “I heard the guards talking. You’re not the last Freelancer, after all. And Price is bargaining with it.”

Wash pauses, considering. “Who’s left?”

“Agent Carolina. Your old buddy. So you better think hard when you go in there.”

Wash feels as if he can’t breathe, because of all the names, _that_ wasn’t the one he expected. Because Carolina had died, had been the first victim of the Meta, had been dead for a long, long time. Why had she emerged now? And why were these two mercenaries in conflict with her? “Why tell me?”

 _Red hair, a laugh, the sting of paint, a daughter’s arms around his neck_.

“Because I think if you know, you’re more valuable to Felix and Locus than Price. I think you’re going to be _very_ useful to them. And I like being useful to useful people.” She pats his arm, almost fondly. “Now, I’m going to go make some fancy new bombs. Look after yourself, Washington. No one else will.” 

Wash knows that to be the truth, alright. It’s almost gratifying to hear her say it, though.

Carolina is alive.

He shifts what he knows around in his head, slots the pieces into place. He wraps the knowledge around himself like armor, so they can’t surprise him with it. He schools his face and he walks into the room. 

Two figures in charcoal, green and orange are waiting for him. Wash feels inadequately protected in the Kevlar undersuit he’s been given, but even that’s more protection than he’s had in months.

“Have a seat, Agent Washington.”

Wash almost wants to protest the use of the title, but the title is why they’re interested in him, so he swallows it down in the name of survival.

He sits.

“So, here’s the thing,” Felix is fidgety, shifting his weight from leg to leg, constantly moving his hands while he talks. Wash wonders how that translates to a fight, especially in concert with solid, unmoving Locus. “We’ve got an army that needs killing, and your old friend Agent Carolina is a part of that army.”

Wash nods. “I suppose Price is telling you that he has all sorts of Freelancer psychological profiles and things like that to convince you to keep him around.”

The two of them look at each other, confirming it.

“That’s a mistake. He’ll use his position to undermine your operation for his own ends. It’s what he did to the Director. He’ll give you what you want to know, but it’ll screw you over in the end.”

“He has information,” Locus says.

“I know all there is to know about Carolina.” Wash says, being sure to keep his expression completely flat. 

“… you’re saying Price is expendable.” Felix looks intrigued, leaning towards him.

“… yes.”  

“You know the Reds and Blues too, don’t you?” Felix turns to Locus, instead of looking at Wash.

“Of course, they’re involved in this,” Wash mutters to himself, before a sickening thought slides into his mind. “Don’t tell me Carolina implanted the Epsilon A.I.?”

The air goes still, and Wash knows he asked the right question.

“She did,” Locus says.

Wash feels liquid rage pour down his throat into his stomach. He’s been cold ever since the Reds and Blues left him in the snow. But now, the world is hot and bright and angry, and Wash feels more alive than he has in a long time. He swallows it down, but he flexes his hands slightly, even though they’re clasped tightly before him. Every inch of his body is on edge and sensitive, ready to move.

“Price is expendable,” he says.

“Sounds like it,” Felix says, and he places a hand on Wash’s shoulder. “So… do you want to go take care of it? We can work out the details later… of what _exactly_ you’ll be helping us do.”

“It will involve the deaths of the simulation troopers,” Locus says, as if he expects this to be a barrier.

Wash snorts. “I already killed one of them. It won’t be a problem.”

Felix tells him where to find Price and hands him a knife.

Afterwards, Locus shows him to the armory, where a new set of armor is waiting for him. He says nothing about the blood that covers Wash’s arms.

Wash puts the new helmet—grey as the ceilings of the Tartarus—on his head, and, once he’s hidden behind it, he breathes deeply.

He has a mission. He has a way forward.

He follows Locus out of the armory and begins day two.

* * *

 

Wash wonders if he should be more surprised than he is that his last boss and his current boss are the same person.

He thinks that maybe he should be—Chairman Hargrove is, after all, a respected figure, a politician, a businessman, and this job is… messy. Felix and Locus aren’t coming out and saying it outright, but this planet, Chorus, was once an inhabited, colonized world, even if now, _supposedly,_ it’s a planet made up of one big army.

Over the past few days, Wash has watched the planet grow closer and closer, through the windows he’d never been allowed to even know existed on the Tartarus before. It’s nothing like Wash’s home planet, the only other one he’s spent as much time examining from space—too much water, only a single mass of land. A tiny little world, valuable for some reason to one, very powerful man. But only if all the inhabitants are dead.

But he supposes that it just makes more sense, that Hargrove would hire out to get this problem solved. Bad optics, for a man of Hargrove’s standing to be involved in something so dirty. A massacre on this scale could taint anyone’s political reputation, even one as powerful as Hargrove.

On the call, Hargrove makes no mention of their past experiences, of Wash’s past failures, a gesture that’s probably meant to seem magnanimous, but feels… dismissive. As if the death of the Meta, the failure to retrieve the Epsilon unit intact, Wash’s inability to provide information detailed enough to satisfy the man… as if it was nothing. As if Wash’s entire life weren’t ruined by it.

But the man hadn’t _actively_ screwed him over yet… just held Wash accountable for failing to uphold his end of the bargain.

Wash can’t exactly blame the man for that, even if he wants to.

There’s not a contract, because there’s supposed to be no trace, and as a criminal, rather than a mercenary like Felix and Locus, even a shell company can’t really get away with paying him on the books.

But there’s a verbal agreement, which honestly is probably worth more than the dotted line Wash signed for Freelancer. There’s money in it for him, and more importantly, _freedom_.

When Carolina, the Reds and Blues, and the rest of the Chorus armies are dead, Wash gets to walk away. He’s not going back to prison. Not this time.

Control is dizzyingly, electrifyingly close, and that emboldens Wash, removes any of his hesitance. Facing down Carolina, even facing down Epsilon, will be manageable, because _freedom_ lies on the other side.

Price is dead, his corpse thrown out the airlock—and that was a satisfying sight, with the comfort and knowledge that no one could have survived that, even if Price had miraculously been able to survive what Wash had done earlier.

All of Price’s plans, his schemes and machinations, gone.

Wash has quietly waylaid Price’s lackeys too; easier, because none of them were assets to Felix and Locus nearly on Price’s level. Locus has made a few pointed comments about manpower, but Wash has convinced him that anyone whose loyalty was bought by Price couldn’t be trusted anyways.

That just leaves one other obstacle in Wash’s way.

“So,” Sharkface growls, stepping into Wash’s view. He’s taller, broader too now that he’s in armor. It’s an unwelcome sight, but Locus and Felix would have been foolish not to take advantage of the man, with his background and his grudge against Carolina.

Too bad it was a grudge against _him_ , as well.

Time for a gamble, then.

“You’re alive after all,” Sharkface looks like he wants to circle Wash, but now… Wash has his armor and his knives, cutting down on Sharkface’s physical advantage. It’s a more even playing field, and Sharkface knows it. Neither of them are wearing their helmets and they don’t have their guns. But it’s still a more even playing field. 

“Did they tell people I was dead, or did they just assume it?” Wash wonders. Perhaps it was some ploy of the Chairman’s—have Wash thrown into solitary and left off the books, a test for… someone. Or maybe he’d just been forgotten in there, tucked away into the tiny cell, only fed out of habit by some guard who never checked the roster.

Sharkface doesn’t answer Wash’s question, instead staring at him intently.

“We’re supposed to work together,” Wash says, a halfhearted attempt to try to defuse this conflict, one that’s been bubbling and festering for as long as they’ve both been onboard this ship. Locus and Felix let him have Price, let him quietly get rid of a few prisoners who he couldn’t trust to have his back, but an asset like Sharkface… they might get more upset about thi one. Wash has already witnessed Felix delightedly recounting how Sharkface has promised to burn Carolina alive.

Wash hadn’t needed the reenactment. Sharkface has threatened to do the same to him more times than Wash can count.

Sharkface lets out a completely joyless laugh. “Like I’m going to be working with a _Freelancer_ ,” he says. “Especially not _you_.” He gestures to his face, the familiar scars twisting as he scowls. Scars Wash is, supposedly, responsible for, because of that day in the tower.

Well.

Wash has tried.

And to be completely honest…

He’s been looking forward to this.

Sharkface expects a comeback, or maybe even another attempt at pacification, but Wash is done playing nice. He’s taken months, maybe even years of beatdowns, several hospital trips, and eleven stints in solitary. He’s taken insults, sharpened toothbrushes shoved through his skin, and broken noses. He’s fought defensively only, trying to stay alive, trying to hurt the man enough to get him to let go.

Wash has only never tried to kill Sharkface back because he knows that killing another prisoner will only ensure that he gets a bullet in his skull from a guard.

But now?

Wash can taste freedom, sweet and fresh and hopeful. It doesn’t matter that freedom is an entire planet away, that it’s conditional and held in the hands of a politician and two mercenaries and who knows who else. Wash can taste it, and that’s all that matters. Sharkface is just one more obstacle between him and freedom.  

And so he goes in for the kill.

It’s funny, how people are always willing to underestimate him. Sharkface clearly isn’t expecting a fight like this, or any fight at all. Did he just expect Wash to roll over, to let Sharkface burn him to death like he’d always threatened? To submit like it’s inevitable?

Wash is a survivor. He survived the army, he survived Freelancer, he survived Recovery, and now he’s survived prison. He survived the Director, the Counselor, Epsilon, the Meta, Agent Texas, and even the Reds and Blues. He’s survived shotguns to the face, warthogs to the chest, an A.I. shattering in his mind, and years of Sharkface.

He is not about to die to satisfy the vengeance of someone else, not when his own isn’t done yet. Not when the Reds and Blues and Epsilon and Carolina, who left him to prison and the snow, are walking free and careless on the planet below.

Wash darts forward, ducking behind Sharkface, before the man can grab him, because he knows if the man gets his hands on Wash it’ll be that much harder to get the advantage now that they’re both in armor. He reaches up, grabs a hold of Sharkface’s shaggy brown hair, and _moves_. He slams Sharkface’s face against the concrete wall with a satisfying _thud_ that Wash can feel shake through his own body. The man isn’t wearing his helmet, and blood begins to flow freely, and he sputters and struggles, trying to throw Wash off. How often had Sharkface done this to him?

Too often.

Wash pulls him back then shoves him forward again, knowing each blow reduces Sharkface’s ability to fight back properly. His nose breaks, and Sharkface finally yells, blood coming out of his mouth and nose freely, as he twists in Wash’s grip—like a fish, Wash thinks, darkly amused. The other prisoners whisper, but no one moves to pull Wash off Sharkface, and there are no guards to break them apart, not anymore.  

Wash scans the crowd for Felix or Locus out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t see them. Shrugging to himself, he throws Sharkface to the ground, reaching for a knife.

Sharkface doesn’t stay down, getting to his feet and staggering, perhaps sensing that Wash isn’t about to show mercy, isn’t about to just let him walk away from all of this.

“You!” Sharkface yells, his voice garbled by blood, his gait unsteady as he tries to reach for Wash, refusing to stay down, refusing to surrender.

Wash can almost admire that.

But Wash is also not going to let it happen. Wash lashes out without another thought, grabbing ahold of Sharkface’s exposed neck with his armored hand, and pulling him up, off his feet.

Sharkface is a tall man, but not that much taller than Wash.

Wash lifts and squeezes.

Sharkface claws at Wash’s armor desperately, trying to get Wash to let go. His armored gloves had fallen to the side at some point, so it’s fingernails and skin, clawing against Wash’s own armor. Wash just squeezes harder, feeling bones shift beneath his grip and watching, dispassionately, as Sharkface’s face begins to change colors, part of him expecting the barrel of a gun to arrive at the back of his head, ordering him to let Sharkface go in Locus or Felix’s voice, but it doesn’t come.

No one stops Wash as he strangles Sharkface in front of the crowd of prisoners.

Sharkface’s hand, now bleeding, falls to his side, loose and limp.

Wash can’t feel a pulse anymore, but he keeps holding the body up, just in case. He’s played dead often enough not to trust it in anyone else.

He only lets Sharkface drop to the ground in an inelegant, bloody heap when he hears the start of a slow clap.

The sound cuts through everything, and Wash half turns, wondering if he’s about to have to fight again, unsure of what he’s going to see.

Felix and Locus are standing right behind him, shoulder to shoulder, taking in the scene. Locus’s arms are crossed, while Felix has his helmet off, and is the one clapping. It’s slow, almost sarcastic, but the grin on his face is wild and vicious and almost genuine. Wash isn’t sure what that means, but he suspects it’s nothing good. He’s only spent limited time with Felix so far, but what he knows…

“Nice one, Wash,” Felix says, dropping his hands to his sides and striding forward. “He had it coming, didn’t he?” A few long strides allow him to cover the distance between them quickly.

Felix’s breath is hot against Wash’s cheek as he sidles up to him, throwing an arm over Wash’s shoulders.

“You’re going to have to pick up the slack, though,” he hisses, too quiet for the other prisoners to hear. Wash is just surprised not to feel the prick of a knife at his side. “He was going to be _useful_.”

Wash shrugs, wondering if there’s a right answer to the implied threat. It doesn’t matter, he decides. Felix and Locus could have stopped him from killing Sharkface if they truly objected. The lines had been clearly drawn.

Wash is more useful of a weapon than Sharkface against Carolina, and they know it. It’s why Wash is still alive, and Sharkface is dead.

 “Should have told him not to try to kill me then.”

Felix pauses, then laughs, slapping Wash on the back, hard enough to knock the wind out of him. To the other prisoners, it looks like camaraderie, and Wash knows that to them, he’s just been given a free pass to do whatever he needs to do.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Chrissie give him a thumbs up.

“Come on Wash,” Felix says, stretching out a hand. “I think it’s about time you see the sights of Chorus, don’t you?”

Wash moves away from Sharkface, towards Felix and Locus.

Towards Chorus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be Tucker POV! Should be fun, right? =D 
> 
> Character deaths in this chapter: Price and Sharkface.


	2. No Regrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE WHO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER AND LEFT A COMMENT OR A KUDOS! 
> 
> Secondly, I forgot to do this last time, but shout out to the amazing saltsanford who served as part of the inspiration for this with her amazing fic PMGITG, and one particular scene in this chapter is a shoutout to that fic, done with permission! 
> 
> Shoutout to Mei as always for their fantastic art, and shoutout to sroloc_elbisivni for being a great beta, and I hope you all enjoy this little dip into Tucker's POV!

Tucker has had a lot of regrets in his life. He regrets never saying goodbye to Church properly. He regrets not hugging his mom more when he was a kid. He regrets not telling Junior he loves him more.

He has never, not once, spared a single regret for leaving Agent Washington behind.

They walk away from the soldiers and the slumped, handcuffed figure in grey and yellow armor, go back to Valhalla, and find Donut. That’s where Carolina finds them, telling them that Epsilon can be saved, and that she wants help stopping the Director.

Tucker hesitates, but then she explains that he’s the guy who gave Church nightmares, and he’s in.

“What happened to Washington?” She asks once. Tucker wonders why she hasn’t already just left them behind, because she clearly doesn’t know what to do with them. She’s infuriated by them being awful at soldiering, she gets confused by Caboose and frustrated by Sarge and mad at Tucker flirting with her. She is curious about the alien sword and sad about the Meta and furious about Tex.

“He tried to kill us,” Tucker says. “He kidnapped Doc and shot Donut and killed Church, so we let the military guys take him away.”

Carolina winces.

“Was he your friend?”

“Yes,” Carolina says. “But friends in Freelancer rarely stayed that way.”

“… man, that’s messed up.”

Carolina lets out a short laugh, and Tucker realizes he hasn’t heard her laugh before, even like this.

“Yeah,” she says. “It was.”

Tucker sits down next to her on the ground, and she tenses up, but Tucker decides to ignore that, because he remembers Tex getting like that sometimes, and while sure, Carolina’s probably and all (he hasn’t seen her without her helmet, but he’s got a sixth sense for this sort of thing), she’s got too much going on right now, so he doesn’t flirt or anything, just takes off his helmet, and turns his face up to the stars.

“You know, I figured out that the war was fake,” Tucker says, after a moment. “It was an accident, but I… I put it together, and I realized that it’s all fake, and that I was… I was fighting against people who were assholes, but like, once I got to know them, they were also my friends. But we kept fighting and it was fucking _stupid_ and then later we find out that it’s because you Freelancers needed _training_. We were just… supposed to die.”

She’s quiet for a very long time, and then there’s the sound of armor being released, and Tucker turns his head.

She’s got bright red hair and green eyes, a face covered in scars, and an exhausted expression, but yeah, still hot.

“The Director is my father,” she says. “My _father_ left me for dead, and ripped my life apart, and killed my friends, and set us against each other, and it was for _nothing_.”

Tucker stares at her. “That fucking sucks,” he tells her.

She laughs again, and this time, it’s more real, softer around the edges, and Tucker grins.

She yells at them a little less often, after that. She still yells, but it’s less… mean, and fonder, and she even tries to tell a _joke_ , which freaks Simmons out and Tucker decides, right then and there, that she’s going to be a blue.

* * *

Then, there’s Chorus.

* * *

They fucking crash land on Chorus, and Carolina and Church take off, and Caboose builds a fucking robot, and Tucker is just fucking _tired_ of being in charge.

Then there are mercenaries and pirates and rebel armies, and Lopez, Sarge, and Donut are captured by the bad guys, and Tucker has to be in charge again and try to help get the rebels into shape. He makes friends with Kimball and sometimes gets along with Felix, and tries to rescue his friends from the bad guys except they’re _not_ bad guys, that’s Felix, and the war isn’t even real, and Carolina comes back, and so does Church, and Tucker isn’t even sure which of them he’s angrier at, so he settles for yelling at both of them, because they’re supposed to be a _team_.

Felix stabs Tucker, but Tucker gets out of it with a new scar and a bunch of new nightmares.

They end the war, and everyone moves to Armonia, and despite the bad guys still being out there and trying to kill them… Tucker’s okay with that. Things are still better than they’ve been in a long time.

And then Locus and Felix manage to find new people to fight for them.

Most are nothing to worry about… just some guys, normal evil dickheads who are okay killing a planet for a paycheck.

But one day, Tucker sees someone more dangerous on the battlefield.

The guy is wearing familiar grey and yellow armor, and Tucker automatically shoves Donut down, out of sight, because Felix, he can handle, Felix’s target is _Tucker_. But Washington? Who knows who that guy will leave for dead this time.

Washington is here, and alive, and working for the bad guys.

And for the first time, Tucker regrets leaving the guy in the snow.

He should have shot him instead, when he’d had the chance.

* * *

“I saw Washington today,” he says to Carolina, even before he goes to report to Kimball and Doyle.

She goes very, very still, and Tucker thinks she’s an inch away from punching the wall.

“He was a prisoner,” she says, softly.

“Yeah.” Tucker says. He doesn’t tell Carolina that he wishes he’d shot the guy. Carolina doesn’t _get_ Washington, not the way that Tucker does. She thinks of Wash as some sort of weird goofball, who’d gotten grappling hooks stuck to his balls and liked curly straws and cats.

She’s never seen Washington like Tucker and the Reds have; willing to throw anyone and everyone under the bus in the name of his own survival, shooting _Donut_ of all people just to prove a point.

Tucker wishes, in a way, that Carolina never _will_ have to deal with the Washington that’s been haunting Donut’s nightmares for the past few years. He wishes she could just get to have the happy memories, instead of dealing with another thing from the past that’s screwed up and angry and ugly. She’s heard Donut screams, just like the rest of them, but Tucker thinks that she still hasn’t quite managed to make the connection between _Wash_ , the dorky guy she tells stories about when she’s drunk, with Washington, who killed Tucker’s best friend and chased the rest of them all around the world to get his hands on Epsilon.

“Mind if I tag along for your report?” She asks. It’s actually a question, Tucker realizes with surprise, instead of an order she’s pretending to be one. She’d accept it if he said no.

When did she start to respect him, not just like him?

… when did Tucker start to _earn_ that respect? And when did he start turning down a perfectly good opportunity to make a joke about having sex with her?

“Sure,” Tucker says, rather than deal with the strangely uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, and the two of them easily fall into step together.

* * *

Tucker tries to correct his mistake with Washington a few days later, managing to get a pot-shot off on him by luck.

Washington is _dangerous_ , that’s become rapidly apparent over the past few weeks. He’s sabotaged three supply runs, stabbed Palomo in the thigh, and is currently trying to murder his way through Doyle’s guard to get to him.

Tucker knows Carolina wants to talk him down, wants to get her friend back, but Tucker feels perfectly justified trying to put a bullet through his visor.

Washington ducks, just in time, but he’s not quite fast enough to fully dodge the bullet, which clips his arm instead of getting his head.

Tucker wishes he could be satisfied with that, but instead it rankles. It’s another reminder that he’s outclassed _again_. Bad enough when Felix and Locus were around; there was still Carolina, and Carolina could take both of those guys with a leg injury and turn out okay.

But now, there’s Washington, and Tucker _knows_ even Carolina can’t take all three of them on their own, and so he needs to step up, but he can’t even do _this_. He can’t pull his goddamn weight. He _needs_ to be able to take this guy, but just like always, he’s fucking outclassed, and he _hates it_.

Washington turns his gaze towards Tucker, and Tucker feels himself go cold as the two of them stare at each other across the battlefield.

Honestly, they’d only ever talked that one time, before the Meta had gone fucking murderous. It had been a brief order, nothing chummy or anything like that, and even then, a part of Tucker had rankled at that, wanting to demand who the fuck did this guy think he was, giving Tucker an order when Donut was _dead_.

But it hadn’t mattered anyways, because Washington got hurt, too hurt for them to reasonably get away fast enough before the UNSC arrived, and even though Caboose had _begged_ Tucker to keep him, Tucker hadn’t had a single fucking qualm about saying no, because Donut was _dead_.

Donut, who had kept Tucker sane in the goddamn dessert, who was Junior’s godfather, who had made Tucker eat cheese and drink wine, and who had been _nice_ , even when he was being an asshole. Washington had just shot him  like he was _nothing_ , because that’s what Sim Troopers were to guys like him.

They were nothing to him, and he would have happily killed all of them to get what he wanted, and so Tucker said no, and let the UNSC take him, and even when Donut had turned out to be alive, he hadn’t regretted it.

Because they weren’t _people_ to Sim Troopers. Even Carolina hadn’t really thought of them that way for a while.

Tucker had never stopped to wonder how aware Washington had been, when he’d been lying on the snow, with Doc fussing over his wounds and Caboose and Tucker arguing over his moaning near-corpse. He’d honestly always assumed the guy had been out of it, and if he had thought he was awake, he wouldn’t have cared, because it wasn’t like they were ever going to meet again.

But now, with Washington staring at him across a battlefield...

Tucker knows better.

Washington had been perfectly aware of why he’d been left for the UNSC to find.

And he definitely wanted to kill Tucker for it.

He takes a step towards Tucker for a moment, seemingly distracted from his mission, when Donut lets out a shout of “Hey asshole! Remember me?” And throws a grenade at him.

Washington avoids that too, but it’s enough to let them circle him and drive him away.

They’ve all survived for another day, but Tucker can’t help but think that Washington will be back... well, okay, he’s definitely going to come back, but Tucker thinks that this time, he might be specifically coming after Tucker, because of the whole prison thing.

It’s not that Tucker doesn’t feel for the guy, cuz hey, prison probably really sucks, but as he sits next to Palomo in the hospital, he can’t help but feel like prison wasn’t enough for guys who were willing to hurt kids like Palomo just for whatever it was that Hargrove promised him.

Probably a pretty fucking good paycheck or some bullshit like that.

So when Kimball asks him to go out on the next mission and tells him that Washington will probably be there, he quietly tells her to make sure Caboose and Donut aren’t there.

He doesn’t want either of them to get hurt.

She allows it.

This is why he likes Kimball, honestly. She’s fucking _sensible_.

* * *

Meeting Washington directly on the battlefield goes about as well as Tucker could have expected.

Tucker’s better with the sword. Carolina’s been working with him on it, the two of them doing drills and working on his footwork and shit. He’s still not _great_ , but honestly just fucking having a sword is usually enough to let Tucker at least survive most fights, if not win. As long as it’s not against Felix. Felix is a whole other story.

But Washington isn’t Felix. He’s worse.

He’s a _Freelancer_ , and Tucker has had his ass kicked by Tex and Carolina enough times to take that seriously.

Sure, he’s probably not as competent as those two, because those two are freakishly competent and were apparently top of the leaderboard, but being a Freelancer _meant_ something. Wyoming and the Meta were Freelancers and had nearly killed him too. He doesn’t know where Washington falls amongst them, but Tucker will _not_ underestimate him.

Underestimating Felix has given him a fucking giant ass scar, and Tucker’s not keen on repeating that experience.

It’s dumb, but it hadn’t really sunk in before, just how stupid evil Felix is. Killing the planet... that was too big, and Tucker was too desperate for it to sink in. Even Locus boxing them in and Felix tricking him with the grenade... it wasn’t _real._

Not like Felix’s pure _joy_ at sliding that knife into Tucker’s stomach.

The guy’s not just getting paid for this. He gets off on it.

Tucker’s nervous to find out where Washington falls on that spectrum.  

He cuts three pirates down, shoots another, and grits his teeth when he hears Washington’s voice over the radio of one of the ones he’s killed.

A sniper shot goes off and instinct kicks in. Tucker tucks and rolls forward, his own rifle going to his hand and automatically returning fire. Tucker’s not _great_ at what he does, but he’s been a soldier for over a decade by now, and he’s survived so much fucking bullshit. He’s survived Wyoming and C.T. in the desert and Crunchbite and Tex clones and Sarge’s crazy inventions.

Tucker’s no Freelancer, but he’s not easy to kill either.

“Well, well. Lavernius Tucker.” Tucker doesn’t really have time to question how the fucking Freelancer has the Blue Team radio frequency (Caboose, it’s almost definitely Caboose), because another shot goes off, and Tucker dives for cover, letting loose a burst of bullets of his own before he makes it.

“Dude, you fucking sound like a supervillain,” Tucker snaps over the radio.

“Just doing my job, Captain.”

“ _Dude_ , are you seriously saying that? Just following orders? I slept through history class, and _I_ know that’s bullshit.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Washington says, and _ha_! He sounds actually _offended_.

“Sorry, I guess I missed the memo about mass murder being cool as long as you’ve got a tragic enough backstory. Want to hear Kimball’s? It’s great, you should hear it sometime, it involves this fucking Freelancer trying to kill her!”

“This isn’t about her. It isn’t even about this planet,” Washington says, and shit, he hasn’t shot at Tucker in a while. “It’s about _you_ , and your _friends_ , and what you did to _me_. I’m only doing what I need to do to get out of prison, where I was because of _you_.”

Between Tex, the Meta, and Locus, Tucker is pretty good at spotting camouflage by now. He spots it out of the corner of his eye, and he curses to himself and forces himself to pretend to not notice, because _seriously_? What is with Freelancers and their upgrades.

He waits until he hears the slightest sound of Washington loading a new cartridge, and then he fucking _moves_.

“ _Gotcha_!” Tucker crows. “How’s it feel to get tripped up by a _Sim Trooper_ , you self-centered asshole?”

“You _left me there_ ,” Washington says, his rifle pointed right at Tucker, a counterpoint to Tucker’s sword against his throat.

“You killed Church! You _tried_ to kill Donut! What, was I supposed to fucking drag you along just because Caboose liked you?”

“It’s your people’s fault I was in prison in the first place,” Washington snarls. “You, and fucking _Carolina_.”

“I wasn’t even fucking _there_ , dude! And even if I was, so what? It’s clear bringing you along would have been a fucking _terrible_ idea.”

Washington’s exhale is sharp, and Tucker plunges forward without thought or care, because, seriously, _fuck this guy_. “I mean, fuck, bad enough you’re willing to fucking kill Church so you can get your dumb ass revenge, but you’re also willing to kill an entire goddamn planet just so _you_ end up okay? Your freedom is worth that much, huh? Bet you would have thrown the rest of us under a bus the first chance you’d have gotten. If you hadn’t killed us all in our sleep in a fit of Freelancer paranoia first, at least.”

Tucker breathes deeply. “And yeah, maybe it was shitty of Carolina to leave you there, but do you have any idea how fucked up she was after the Meta, dude? Have you _seen_ her scars?” Tucker has. Tucker has seen the weblike streaks all over her body, marking the points where her armor had shattered around her, scars she’d shown him as a show of trust, to show him that she _understood_. “She had her _own_ shit to deal with, Washington! So shove the broody righteous hero attitude, cuz guess what?” Tucker licked his teeth and grinned beneath his helmet, tasting blood from the earlier blow to his helmet.

“You’re the goddamn bad guy here.”

There’s a moment of silence there, as Washington reels back, and then Sarge charges around the corner, swinging his shotgun, and Tucker gets shot in the goddamn knee by Washington, and Washington gets away, but hey, they at least got the supplies they needed, and Caboose and Donut didn’t have to deal with Washington and his melodramatic self-pity.

* * *

It’s another three weeks before Washington shows up on another mission.

They’re planning on blowing up a pirate headquarters, and Donut’s already planted the bomb and Tucker’s making one last sweep for information and supplies when it turns out that, shit, this part of base isn’t as abandoned as they’d planned on it being, because _Washington’s there_.

“You again?” Washington sounds almost tired as he points his gun at Tucker.

“Thought you would have been happy to meet someone on your kill list,” Tucker says because his fucking mouth just doesn’t stop when it should.

“Maybe,” Washington says, tilting his helmet to one side. “Now... what are you doing here?”

“Took a fucking wrong turn I guess,” Tucker says, watching the countdown slowly creep down out of the corner of his eye. Donut’s nearby, it’d be easy enough to contact him, ask for a rescue, but...

If Donut gets caught in the explosion, or worse, hurt by Washington, Tucker will never forgive himself.

So instead he takes a single step backwards until he’s standing in a doorway--that’s what you’re supposed to do during earthquakes, right? He’s far enough from the actual blast zone that as long as the building doesn’t directly collapse on top of him he’ll be fine--and makes sure that Washington doesn’t think to call for an evacuation of the base.

_20..._

“Were you hoping for Carolina instead? I mean, honestly dude I’m offended. She’s hot and all, but hey, so am I, but you know I really think that she got the short end of the stick in this armor line--”

_10..._

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“I don’t know, do you ever pull that fucking stick out of your ass?”

_5..._

The gun twitches up towards him.

“You’re lucky Felix wants you alive.”

Tucker’s mouth goes dry at that.

_2..._

“What?”

_1..._

Washington takes a step towards him, and the world falls to goddamn pieces.

Tucker blacks out for a moment, and the last thing he hears is Washington shouting.

* * *

Tucker wakes up first, and he scrambles for his gun, grabs Washington’s helmet off his face, and throws it as far away from them as possible. No radio for him.

The building has collapsed all around them, with the two of them trapped in a tiny space that leaves Tucker barely enough room to move far enough away from Washington to be able to get off a shot.

Tucker’s not claustrophobic, but shit, if he’s down here to long, he might end up that way. The ceiling has fallen down towards them, making it impossible to stand up completely, and the walls are nothing but rubble, pressing in on them from all sides.

Washington wakes up a few moments later, and Tucker grips his gun tightly. “Don’t move, asshole!”

Washington grits his teeth and opens his eyes, and Tucker has to stop and stare because wow, the guy looks fucked up. He must have gotten into a goddamn brawl or something right before he’d ran into Tucker, because the guy looks like _shit._

“You set a bomb. Clever.” Washington slowly looks around, taking it all in, and concern flickers across his face, as he realizes that his helmet and gun are gone, and how trapped they are.

“I know right? Brains _and_ looks. My mom always said I was born for great things.”

Washington carefully hauls himself into a sitting position, and Tucker might hate the guy, but he lets him, because honestly, he doesn’t know how long they’ll be here, and the position doesn’t look that comfortable at all. He’s not getting signal for his radio down here, and all he can do is hope that his people find them before Washington’s do. Washington sits cross-legged, fiddling with his gloves, as if he’s got nothing better to do.

They sit in silence for a long time, before Tucker finally has to ask the question that’s been burning at him for weeks now.

“You _really_  think the Chairman'll let you go?”

“Shut up.”

“You know the guy has like. A fucking Freelancer _kink_ right?”

Washington looks _tired_ , Tucker realizes, as the man sets his jaw. Those aren’t black eyes, not like Tucker thought at first, those are bags and dark circles. Grey is shocked through the blond, and his eyes are icy grey as he stares down Tucker, not saying anything.

“Whatever,” he says, shrugging. “Whatever you think, you’re wrong.”

“They let me out,” Washington snaps, his eyes flashing. “That’s more than your people ever did.”

“Hey,” Tucker says, sarcastically tapping his chin. “Didn’t the Chairman, like, throw you _in_ jail in the first place?”

Washington twitches. Just slightly, but he does.

“You know it, too,” Tucker wonders out loud. “Wow, you’re really fucking delusional aren’t you? They’re not going to let you go, dude. They never were. I bet if you’d have given them Epsilon they’d have said he was damaged or something and thrown you right back in where they could keep an eye on you, and then you’d have ended up here anyways and claimed it was our fault because Caboose broke Epsilon by telling him too many tall tales or something.”

Washington clenches his fists.

“You think you know so much about me, don’t you?”

“Dude, I don’t _need_ to know the inside of your fucked up brain or your tragic backstory. You’re working with _them_. You’re killing a planet for a paycheck and hate us for not letting you join our fucking team after you killed our friends.” Tucker shrugs, not letting his rifle move away from Washington for a minute. “I don’t need to know anything else. I know enough.”

Fury flickers across Washington’s face before he suppresses it. He’s aiming for some sort of tranquility, but it just looks like resting bitch face. “This planet is military organized,” he says flatly. “We’re fighting an army, not a planet.”

“Tell that to the sixteen year olds running around wearing armor,” Tucker snaps. “Shut the fuck up, Washington and get over yourself. I can handle you being a dick, just stop pretending you’re a dick in the right.”

At that point, he hears Donut’s voice shouting his name. “We’re down here!” He yells back.

“Guess you’re going back to prison after all,” Tucker tells Washington. “We don’t have the nice accommodations of a giant spaceship, but I’m sure you’ll be _fine_.”

Taunting the trapped Freelancer with nothing to lose is probably not the greatest idea Tucker’s ever had, but he’s _sick_ and _tired_ of this guy and his _bullshit._

“Tucker!” Rocks are shifting behind him.

“Fucking finally, some fucking backup,” Tucker mutters, and turns around.

He spots an orange helmet, and freezes on the spot.

Washington moves suddenly, and there’s an elbow pulled tight around his neck, yanking him backwards before Tucker can even _think_.

“Sorry Captain Tucker,” Washington says in his ear as Felix grabs the rifle away from him. “But it’s not _your_ backup.”

“Hey Wash,” Felix says, almost casual in his glee.

“Alive, just like you asked for, sir,” Wash says over Tucker’s head

Tucker is _so fucked_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed! Thanks for reading!
> 
> You can find me to yell at over on tumblr @secretlystephaniebrown.


	3. A Taste of Vengeance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so I gave in and added another two chapters because of course I did. 
> 
> ANYWAYS Thank you so much to everyone! I'm so delighted to get to share this little universe with you.
> 
> SHOUTOUT AS ALWAYS TO SROLOC_ELBISIVNI, the beta of betas, and joumeimei421, who did some killer art of the last chapter. [Check it out!](https://jomeimei421.tumblr.com/post/178667065853/hi-secretlystephaniebrown-is-an-angel-and-started)
> 
> Warnings for: captivity, off-page torture, violence, and smoking.

If Wash had to pick a single Simulation Trooper that he hated most, Lavernius Tucker would probably top the list.

His voice has never stopped echoing in Wash’s ears, demanding that Caboose get away from him, and now, there are more words, entire fucking _speeches_ , telling Wash things that aren’t true, that don’t make sense, because Lavernius Tucker _doesn’t know what he’s talking about_.

He doesn’t know Wash, he doesn’t know what he’s been through. The opinion of a simulation trooper, especially one responsible for ruining Wash’s life, shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t rankle, but it does.

He understands why Felix hates him, although he can’t imagine at all why Felix wants him alive.

* * *

 

Wash wakes up in the cave with Tucker and he doesn’t understand why he isn’t dead.

He must have been out for several minutes, long enough for Tucker to disarm him and take his helmet, although he’s failed to find the emergency beacon hidden in his gloves or the knives tucked into his armor.

If their situations had been reversed, Wash wouldn’t have killed Tucker, but only because Felix had strict orders about killing Lavernius Tucker, and Wash’s revenge went beyond one, even one particularly irritating, Simulation Trooper.

But why is _he_ alive? He couldn’t imagine any of the Simulation Troopers or people of Chorus were eager to torture him the way that Felix was to get his hands on Tucker.

Then he remembers Carolina, and her whispered apology on the battlefield.

Guilt, then. Carolina had told Tucker to save him out of some sense of obligation. Wash supposes he can appreciate the sentiment, even if it’s wasted. He’s years past apology and forgiveness. Any bond from their Freelancer days was rendered moot when she left him in the Director’s hands.

He shoves aside memories of Tucker’s recounting of her injuries, because he doesn’t _care_. All he needs to do is to activate his beacon, and hope that the pirates get here before Chorus’s forces. 

“You set a bomb,” Wash says. His head is pounding, and he can taste blood. Tucker must have made sure they were _just_ far enough outside of blast range. He probably hadn’t run to stop Wash from catching his accomplishes, a level of planning that Wash wouldn’t have attributed to a Simulation Trooper, even one who had reportedly outsmarted Felix. “Clever.”

“I know right? Brains _and_ looks. My mom always said I was born for great things.” Despite his bravado, Tucker is concerned. He doesn’t like this situation anymore than Wash does.

Wash pointedly doesn’t react to Tucker’s words, instead trying to keep his breathing regular. He doesn’t like the looks of this; the collapsed remains of the room is small, and although there is enough light to keep him grounded, to remind him that he isn’t, in fact, still in solitary confinement again, it’s dark enough to be… not great.

All that time, in solitary, Wash had been haunted by Lavernius Tucker’s voice. And now, he’s _here_ , and it was fucking awful enough to set Wash’s teeth on edge.

They sit in silence for a while, long enough for Wash to want to scream, for the walls to seem to get closer, for the room to get slightly darker, long enough for him to want to start screaming, to start clawing at the walls before he starts to hear things again.

Every now and then the rubble shifts, sending a faint cloud of dust and debris into the air and Wash wants to punch Lavernius Tucker in the face, grab his gun, and do… something. He’s not sure what.

Instead he keeps fiddling with the emergency beacon concealed in his gloves, trying to be reassured by the knowledge that he’s valuable enough to the mercenaries for them to come to him, and he’ll be able to give them Tucker, so Felix won’t even be able to complain about the waste of time.

“You really think the Chairman'll let you go?” Tucker finally asks, and it cuts through the fog of paranoia and claustrophobia in Wash’s mind.

“Shut up.”

“You know the guy has like. A fucking Freelancer _kink_ right?” There’s something lascivious about the way Tucker says that word, and Wash feels, of all things, heat rising to his cheeks.

He sets his jaw instead and tries to control himself and not think about those exact doubts in his own mind. None of that _matters_. He can’t focus on things like that. He just needs to keep moving forward. One step at a time. He just needs to keep going, because he _has_ a future now. There’s something beyond the grey walls of the Tartarus, beyond his regular skirmishes with Sharkface and stints in solitary.

There _has_ to be.

“Whatever,” Tucker said with a shrug, obviously taking Wash’s silence at face value. “Whatever you think, you’re wrong.”

Anger boils in Wash’s chest, vicious and angry and _bitter_. His fingertips feel cold, and if he looks out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he can see snowbanks.

“They let me out,” Wash spits, staring right at the teal helmet to keep himself grounded in the present. “That’s more than your people ever did.”

“Hey,” Tucker says, tapping the chin of his helmet mockingly. “Didn’t the Chairman, like, throw you _in_ jail in the first place?”

He wouldn’t have been in there if Caboose had just handed Epsilon over, if Epsilon hadn’t insisted on chasing after Tex, if Carolina had—

Wash cuts himself off from that line of thinking, but it wasn’t fast enough. Tucker saw it.

“You know it, too,” Tucker says, and Wash _really_ wants to punch him right now. “Wow, you’re really fucking delusional aren’t you?”

Wash clenches his hands into fists and tries to tune him out, but Lavernius Tucker’s voice is weirdly good at digging in, at sticking to him like tiny little barbs.

“They’re not going to let you go, dude. They never were.”

Wash struggles to keep breathing. He feels cold, and the taste of blood in his mouth and the feeling of it drying on his face isn’t helping. He wants to be anywhere else, with _anyone_ else pointing a gun at him, making him listen to a speech that _isn’t true_.

Tucker just keeps on going, refusing to slow down or react to Wash’s expressions.

“I bet if you’d have given them Epsilon they’d have said he was damaged or something and thrown you right back in where they could keep an eye on you, and then you’d have ended up here anyways and claimed it was our fault because Caboose broke Epsilon by telling him too many tall tales or something.”

Wash’s hands are clenched into fists on his lap, and he tries to take knowledge in the comfort that their situations will be reversed soon enough.

“You think you know so much about me, don’t you?” Wash hadn’t meant to speak, but he can’t help himself. This smug satisfaction radiating from Tucker, this assurance that he’s _right_ …

Tucker doesn’t know Wash. He never will. He has never been left behind in the crashed wreckage of a spaceship by the people who called himself his friends, been left in the hands of two monsters after having his brain ripped apart, has never tasted hope only to have it snatched away, not once, but _over and over again_ , has never felt Sharkface’s hands around his neck, has never spent weeks at a time locked in a tiny closet of a room until he wasn’t sure of what reality is.

“Dude, I don’t _need_ to know the inside of your fucked up brain or your tragic backstory. You’re working with _them_.” There’s fear and disgust in equal measure in Tucker’s voice. “You’re killing a planet for a paycheck and hate us for not letting you join our fucking team after you killed our friends. I don’t need to know anything else. I know enough.”

“This planet is military organized,” Wash says. “We’re fighting an army, not a planet.” He won’t reconsider his choices because of Lavernius Tucker. He _won’t_. Not after everything Tucker did to him.

“Tell that to the sixteen year olds running around wearing armor.” For a moment Wash thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe, thinking of all the people he’s spent the past few weeks fighting, because… yes, some of them had sounded inexperience, but _surely_ — “Shut the fuck up, Washington and get over yourself. I can handle you being a dick, just stop pretending you’re a dick in the right.”

Wash feels cold, but it’s a different kind of cold from Sidewinder.

The blood in his mouth tastes bitter.

“ _Tucker_!” Wash doesn’t recognize the voice, but he can see the relief sinking into Tucker, meaning he does.

 _Fuck_.

Tucker’s backup got here first after all.

“We’re down here!” Tucker calls, still pointing his gun at Wash.

“Guess you’re going back to prison after all. We don’t have the nice accommodations of a giant spaceship, but I’m sure you’ll be _fine_.”

Rage, incandescent, all-encompassing _rage_ fills Wash, wiping out everything else. He’s no longer cold, he’s _seething_.

“Tucker!” The voice calls again, and ruble shifts behind Tucker.

Wash sees a familiar grey and orange helmet, and a bubble of giddy, vicious joy explodes in Wash’s chest.

“Fucking finally, some fucking backup.” Tucker turns around to face his supposed help and Wash silently leaps to his feet, eager to make Tucker _pay_ for this excruciating exercise.

Wash can pinpoint the exact moment when Tucker realizes his mistake, realizes that his friend, whoever he thought it was, was actually Felix with a voice modulator. He _freezes_ , and Wash grabs him from behind, pulling him against his chest, his arm wrapped around his throat in a headlock.

“Sorry Captain Tucker,” Wash says, savoring the other man’s fear. “But it’s not _your_ backup.”

“Hey Wash,” Felix says, disarming Tucker easily.  

“Alive, just like you asked for, sir.”

Wash feels the stutter in Tucker’s breath a moment before he cuts off his air.

Tucker knows that this isn’t going to be good for him, and in this moment, Wash couldn’t give a damn.

The Sim Trooper goes slack in his grip, and Felix laughs.

“Let’s get him to the pelican,” Felix says. “And then let’s get out of here before the _real_ Franklin Delano Donut shows up.”

“Is that a real name?”

“Oh, Wash, the things you learn when you spend enough time with these idiots will _astound_ you.”

Felix leaves Tucker’s gun and helmet at the base, taking far too much glee in shattering the visor in with the butt of his own gun, and splattering it with blood that Wash is careful not to question the source of.

Tucker is light enough that the two of them can move him easily even as dead weight, although Wash suspects Felix would have been happy enough to give Tucker the undignified treatment of dragging him.

Locus is waiting for them, and looks Wash up and down before inspecting Tucker’s state. “Secure him,” he orders Wash. “Excellent work.”

He then goes to start up the pelican as Wash locates the handcuffs and secures Tucker to one of the seats.

“Yeah, great job, Wash!” Felix is manic in his joy at capturing Tucker, practically bouncing around the pelican, constantly checking on Tucker’s unconscious form to make sure he hasn’t woken up yet.  

“Why do you want him, anyways?” It’s never occurred to Wash to ask before, but if Locus hasn’t demanded that they just put a bullet between Tucker’s eyes, he imagines it must be for a reason.

“You see this?” Felix holds up the hilt of Tucker’s sword.

“What about it?”

Felix tosses it to him, and Wash catches it only out of pure instinct.

“Try to turn it on.”

It’s strange and heavy, and something about holding it feels _wrong_ inside of Wash’s skin. He wants to drop it immediately, but instead he searches for a switch, for a button, for something, and comes up empty.

“It only works for him,” Felix says, crossing his arms petulantly. “So, I’m gonna make him explain to us exactly how that works, and then, I’ll kill him!”

Wash raises an eyebrow as he works on the shattered visor of his helmet. “I can’t imagine he’ll be excited to tell you with that kind of incentive.”

“Details,” Felix flaps his hand in the air. “I’m good at what I do.”

Something strange crawls up Wash’s spine at hearing that. Something that’s not quite regret and not quite pity, but that’s lurking somewhere in-between.

“Want to watch?” Felix asks. He’s not even looking at Wash, staring instead after Tucker, twirling a knife around in his hand.

Wash doesn’t roll his eyes, because his helmet is still off and he doesn’t want Felix to see.

“I think I have to make a report, first,” he says instead.

“Sure, go make sure Control isn’t throwing a hissy fit,” Felix says lightly, and Wash frowns before he catches himself. He’s going to need a new helmet—he doesn’t like having his expression being exposed like this. It’s too close to prison, even with the rest of his armor there to protect him.

Chrissie is waiting for him. “So, one down,” she says, nudging him.

“It’s not like that,” Wash says, tucking his ruined helmet under his arm. “Can you help me get a new helmet?”

“Only if you tell me what place he was on your list.” She says it like a joke, but Chrissie never jokes about information.

Wash wants to scowl, but he doesn’t. Instead, he places his helmet in her hands.

“Three,” he says. Epsilon, Carolina, Tucker.

“Good on you,” she says, patting him on the arm. “I’ll get you a new helmet before you meet up with Control. Go watch Felix get him settled in, and I’ll meet up with you there.”

Wash, not eager to face Control without his own helmet, does what she suggests.

Locus is standing outside of a room, his arms crossed.

The base that they’re using has an old-fashioned hospital wing, complete with an operating theater with a viewing chamber. He nods at Wash, and then turns his attention back to the large glass window.

“Tell me, Agent Washington,” Locus says, as they watch as Felix removes Tucker’s armor, having already secured the man to the chair in the center of the room. A table stands to the side, covered in artfully placed instruments of various sorts. Not all of them are conventional torture implements, but Wash can hazard a guess for most of them. “Did you do interrogation training for Project Freelancer?”

“Not much.” Most of Wash’s training comes from observation of Price, from seeing how that man took people apart and figured things out, from seeing how he himself had fallen apart under the doctor’s twisted care.

“Felix is… unconventional,” Locus says. “But he gets satisfactory results.”

“You don’t think he’ll kill Tucker?”

Wash isn’t sure why he cares.

Locus makes that pensive humming noise Wash has heard before. “Our scientists believe it’s likely that if Felix does, the sword will be able to be bonded to someone more amenable to our interests.”

“… but there’s enough room for error you’re willing to let Felix do this?”

Locus raises and lowers his shoulders in a shrug, and then turns his gaze onto Wash. Wash hates that he can’t track where Locus’s eyes are in that helmet, hates how he feels like a bug under a microscope beneath his gaze.

Wash starts to turn away, to look back into the room where Felix is starting to sharpen a knife, but Locus reaches out and seizes ahold of his chin. Wash freezes in place as his head is tipped backwards by an armored glove and he’s forced to meet Locus’s gaze.

“Do you have concerns, Agent Washington?” Locus’s voice is soft and dangerous.

“No,” Wash says. He then twists out of Locus’s grip, knowing that Locus is letting him. His face is hot and his chin is bruised and his heart is hammering inside of his chest. “Don’t do that again.” He tries to layer a threat into that statement, but even as he says it, he knows it’s futile. If Wash does anything against Locus, there will be nothing left for him. A word from Locus and he’s finished. Wash has no leverage here, or not enough to counterweigh Locus’s influence on Control.

_“You really think the Chairman'll let you go?”_

Wash has chosen his side, he reminds himself, as he stands next to Locus and watches as Tucker wakes up and starts to thrash against his bonds.

He can’t turn back now.

* * *

 

Chrissie comes and gets Wash, a helmet in grey and yellow tucked under her arm, only a few moments after Tucker starts screaming. Wash jams it on his head and quickly makes his exit with her to make his report to Control, trying to ignore the taste of bile in his mouth.

“He’s pretty,” Chrissie says cheerfully. “If you can ignore the blood, at least.” Her wide grin indicates that she certainly can.

Wash swallows, trying not to think of Tucker _or_ blood and failing on both accounts. “I hadn’t noticed.”

She cackles. “Sure you haven’t.”

“Why are you like this?”

“Why are we all?”

“You can’t just answer a question with a question!”

“I can if it’s a stupid one.” She pats him on the arm. “But don’t worry, Felix and Locus will probably be too busy making out after they’re done with that Sim Trooper to notice that you don’t like torture.”

“And you won’t tell them?” Wash doesn’t bother denying it, but he feels like he’s on unstable ground here, struggling to figure out where, exactly, he stands.

It’s not that Tucker tipped him off balance, he tells himself. It’s _not_.

“Don’t be stupid, Washington. It’d take a lot to get me to betray _you_. You’re the best entertainment this place has!”

“I’m that useful of an investment, huh?”

“You have no idea,” she says, and her grin is wide. “Well, here’s your stop.” She pats his arm again and then swaggers off, whistling cheerfully the whole time.

Wash manages to make his report to Control, and then retreats to his bunk and puts his head between his knees, with Tucker’s words and screams rattling around in his brain.

* * *

Wash can’t sleep.

He’s trying, because he _knows_ he hasn’t been getting enough lately, but his dreams are full of small, dark spaces and snowbanks and Lavernius Tucker’s voice.

He doesn’t know what to do with any of this.

The grey walls of his room in the barracks is the same grey of the Tartarus. It makes sense, it’s the same basic steel, but it just puts Wash further on edge, especially on a night like this.

He puts his armor back on and goes out into the halls, intending to pace until he’s tired enough to go back to sleep or until he’s given something to do.

The hallways of the base wind and in his frazzled, frustrated state, he loses track of where he is and where he’s going. He doesn’t intend to end up outside of the operating theater where Lavernius Tucker is being held captive, but he finds himself there anyways.

He stares at Tucker for a long, long time.

The other man is bleeding profusely from thin, elegant looking knife cuts that are only just starting to scab over. Bruises litter his dark skin, and Wash realizes with a jerk that he’d never realized that Tucker was black before this.

Tucker tugs at the handcuffs that attach him to the chair and Wash also realizes, with a much stronger jerk, that Chrissie was right. Tucker _is_ good looking, under all of the marks.

Wash is unable to resist the urge to open the door and step inside.

The room smells of bleach and blood, a horrifying combination that somehow reminds Wash of his stint in Section 12. He turns up the filter levels in his helmet and steps forward, one foot in front of the other.

Lavernius Tucker jerks up.

“What do you want?”

“Just checking to see if you’re still alive,” Wash says, tilting his head to one side.

“Fuck—” a small trickle of blood leaves the corner of Tucker’s mouth, and he coughs. “You.”

Wash says nothing in response, just watches.

“Knew I should’ve killed you,” Tucker mutters, and there’s something dangerous and dark in his voice. “Knew it.”

Wash goes cold as Tucker closes his eyes again and turns his face away from Wash. Quietly, he moves away, closing the door behind him.

The sword sits on a table just outside of the room, and Wash looks at it again.

_“So shove the broody righteous hero attitude, cuz guess what?”_

_“You’re the goddamn bad guy here.”_

Wash scowls to himself and stalks off to go find Chrissie.

He finds her smoking a cigarette and reading a battered paperback romance novel in the empty cafeteria, a plate stacked him with people’s desserts in front of her. He’s not entirely sure where she got a physical book from, but somehow he’s not surprised by any of this.

He sits down next to her.

“Chrissie…” he says, quietly, trying to think, trying to make sense of… everything. “Is… I heard a rumor, that the Chorus Armies conscript kids.”

She laughs, lowering her book to look at him. “Oh no, they don’t,” she says, and for a moment, Wash can breathe. “Those kids all volunteered. They all say they’re eighteen on the paperwork, according to Felix, but Locus estimates we’ve got some fifteen-year olds or so in the ranks.” She snorts and offers him a brownie. “Can’t believe they need us to help finish the job, can you?” Her eyes are gleaming brightly, as if challenging him.

Wash takes the brownie because he _knows_ this is a test, before he excuses himself and goes to stare at the wall for a while.

 _Kids_.

He’s killing kids.

Unwillingly, he thinks about his sisters, back home, imagines any of them putting on armor to defend their home—

The brownie is crumpled into a ball in the palm of his hand before he manages to pull himself out of that particular scenario.

He doesn’t know what to do with this information. His first and foremost instinct, his one and only goal, is _survival_. So what if his conscious grows heavier for this? This isn’t his fight, this isn’t his business, this isn’t his—he’s just—he’s following orders. This isn’t on _him_.

Wash puts his hand against the wall to steady himself and tries to regulate his breathing, but nothing quite seems to be working. The steel walls of the base seem to be moving in towards him, threatening to crush him between them, and all the while Lavernius Tucker’s words echo in his mind.

_Wow, you’re really fucking delusional aren’t you? Sorry, I guess I missed the memo about mass murder being cool as long as you’ve got a tragic enough backstory. Tell that to the sixteen year olds running around wearing armor! Dude, you fucking sound like a supervillain._

Wash runs his hands over his helmet and shakes his head, trying to shake off that ghost, but nothing will budge.

_“Knew I should’ve killed you,”_

Maybe he should have, Wash thinks, wildly, because Tucker is going to die here, Felix will run out of patience, and he’s going to die, and—

Something cold slips down Wash’s spine, calming and clarifying. The world stops spinning as a solution presents itself.

It’s very simple.

He doesn’t want Felix to kill Lavernius Tucker.

Wash wants to do that himself.

(Maybe _then_ will Wash be able to shake off his voice.)

But he can’t do it here.

So the solution is very simple.

He lets him go.

Carefully, Wash makes his way back to the room. Tucker is asleep, tossing fitfully, his head slumped down against his chest.

Wash moves quietly, entering the room.

The cuffs unlock easily enough, and Wash sets them silently on the ground. Tucker is now free, no longer anchored to the chair, but he remains asleep, his eyelids fluttering as he shifts. He has, Wash can see even from his bad angle, ludicrously long eyelashes.

He stands still for a moment, kneeling behind Tucker’s seated form, staring up at the mess of matted, bloodied hair above him. He feels oddly disgusted by this all—he’s no stranger to torture, but something about this doesn’t sit right with him.

Dismissing the thought, he creeps out of the room as silently as he had arrived. Hesitating by the door, he looks back over his shoulder at Lavernius Tucker, asleep and beaten but not broken, and then looks back at the sword, still on the table next to him.

He slams the door shut behind him, loud enough to wake up Tucker, who lets out a shocked shout and falls out of the chair behind him, and then he _runs_ , so that if Felix does catch Tucker, the man won’t be able to name his rescuer.

But Wash has a nagging suspicion that Lavernius Tucker _will_ make it out.

It just seems like the way things go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Tucker next! Hopefully with some more Carolina, too! 
> 
> As always, I'm over on [tumblr](http://secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com) if you want to chat, although comments are always appreciated over here!


	4. The Specter of Choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIVE! Sorry for the long-ass delay between chapters, I got swept up in NaNoWriMo, which ended up being my longest fic project to date. Whoops. Anyways, we're back, with another Tucker chapter, LET'S GET GOING! 
> 
> Thanks as always to jomeimei421, who inspired the fic, and sroloc_elbisivni for betaing. 
> 
> Warnings for: Discussions of injury and torture, injury, and alcohol use.

Tucker makes it out of the base with some new scars and a broken wrist to show for it. But he has his sword and his armor, and after he collapses into Caboose’s arms and after Doc tapes his wrist and then Grey re-tapes it because Doc did it wrong and after he’s told Carolina and Kimball and Doyle about the cave-in and Felix using Donut’s voice and the torture, he goes and lies down in his bunk.

Because he also has a secret.

He knows who let him escape.

And he has no idea what to do with that information.

* * *

 

Carolina comes to check on him pretty soon after his initial debrief with the generals, a bottle of wine tucked under her arm.

“Are you okay?” She asks. There’s something in her face that he can’t place. Guilt, maybe? She looks tired, as tired as Tucker feels. The dark circles under her eyes have blossomed and darkened, but they’re still not as large or as dark as the one’s under Washington’s—Tucker cuts off that train of thought. Her hair is damp, as if she’s come straight for the shower, and she’s not wearing any of her armor at all, instead looking oddly shrunken in just a black tank top and a pair of Grifball sweats. She’s still taller than him, but that’s beside the point.

He stares at her, trying to figure out what this is, why she’s here.

She shifts, clearly uncomfortable as he is. “Look, I—”

“Epsilon hacked Dr. Grey’s records of my injuries, didn’t he?” Tucker asks, finally putting it all together. He’d asked Grey not to tell the others, mostly because he didn’t want Caboose to be upset, but he should have realized that Church was a sneaky bastard, and Carolina apparently comes by it honestly.

“Yes.”

“Where’d you get that wine?”

“Donut.”

“Come on in, I guess.”

The two of them pile into Tucker’s bunk, and Carolina produces two plastic cups.

Back with the New Republic, Tucker had bunked with Caboose, not wanting to let the other blue out of his sight. Carolina had been _gone_ , and from the ominous comments that Felix was making, she was being hunted by the fucking Feds, and he hadn’t wanted to even _risk it_.

Now, of course, there’s more room. Caboose bunks with Smith now, and Tucker bunks alone, because his other option is _Palomo_ , and that’s not happening. It’s lonely, sometimes, but at least Tucker doesn’t have to listen to Caboose sleep talk.

(Not that he ever misses that. Not at all.)

“You ever been tortured before?” Carolina asks, tentative as removes the screw top of the bottle.

“Yeah, we’re totally not doing this,” Tucker says, grabbing the cup she holds out to him, staring at the contents.  

“Tucker—” There’s a warning in her voice, but it’s one that’s gentle. The kind she does when she’s trying to stop him from hurting himself during training, rather than her shouts of rage when he hits on her or when he steals her hair dye to prank Simmons.

“Washington let me go,” Tucker says before downing his entire glass in one go.

Carolina stands frozen, staring right at him, mouth agape, Church hovering over her shoulder. If he wasn’t wearing armor, Tucker would put money down that Church is making the exact same expression.

“ _What_?” The two of them scream together.

It’s times like this that really prove that they’re siblings.

“I mean,” Tucker grabs the bottle and pours himself more. “I told him I should’ve killed him and then he came back and like, I thought he was gonna kill me, so I pretended to be asleep cuz he seems like the kind of guy who wants to watch the life go out of you if he’s killing you to make a point, y’know?” He takes another, desperate gulp, remembering the soft sound of Washington’s armored feet padding across the floor of the operating theater. “And then instead, he uncuffs me and slams the door as if he’s trying to wake me up. I thought it was like, a trap or something, but he didn’t ambush me when I was running.”

And then Tucker had grabbed his sword and ran and ran and _ran_ , until he’d managed to get out of the base, stealing a mongoose and _driving_ , until he’d managed to practically crash into a search party, lead by Jensen.

It was supposed to be a search party, not a rescue party, because they’d all thought he was already dead.

Carolina and Caboose hadn’t believed it, according to Kimball. The Reds hadn’t either.

It’s nice to be believed in, Tucker supposes. Even though he knows they’d eventually have tried to mount a rescue mission, which would have brought his friends right into the enemy’s reach.

“He let you go,” Carolina says softly. The expression on her face is half wonder, half hope.  

“Yeah.”

The moment fades, and her gaze refocuses on him, intense and intelligent. “You didn’t mention this to Kimball and Doyle.”

“Because I don’t know what it _means_!” Tucker yells, throwing his hands into the air. His injuries protest the movement, but he refuses to let it show, caught up as he is in his own confusion. “I don’t get why he did it! I literally told the guy I should have murdered him and instead he lets me _go_?”

He had been an inch from death; handcuffed and injured and unable to defend himself, and instead of taking the easiest shot in the world, Washington had let him _go_.

What is Tucker supposed to think about this? What is he supposed to _do_?

Carolina runs her fingers through her ponytail absently, staring off into space. A wrinkle appears between her eyebrows, as she tilts her head to one side. “You’ve talked to him a few times, right?” She sounds far away as she says it.

Tucker shifts, not sure what she means by that. Yeah, he’s talked to the guy, but usually to tell him how much he fucking sucks and how much Tucker wants him to die. It’s not like it’s the kind of speech that changes anything. Certainly not something that should make a guy decide that he’s going to let an enemy _go_. “Yeah.”

Her mouth parts for a moment, thoughtful, then quirks up into a smile. “Huh.” Tucker has no idea what she’s thinking, and he’s not sure he wants to know.

Tucker slumps down against the wall. He stares at the bottle for a moment, then decides that he was just tortured, so he’s earned it, and takes a swig directly from the bottle. It’s not the _best_ wine that Donut’s ever managed to procure, but it’s also a hell of a lot better than the bathtub gin that Volleyball brews in an abandoned warehouse that serves as most of the United Armies of Chorus’s liquor supply. He swallows, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and then looks back at Carolina, who’s watching him with those bright green eyes of hers. “I mean, he also was the reason I got captured by Felix so it’s not like I owe him or anything.”

He stares down at his arms, where the bandages cover the thin, but deep cuts left behind by Felix. Grey had told him in her scarily chipper way, that they had been done just so, to stop Tucker from bleeding out entirely, but still to cause blood loss and pain.

Carolina is serious again. “You’re right. You don’t.” She nudges him, more gently than she usually does. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she adds.

It’s hard to believe that this is the same woman who had once held a gun to the back of his head and tried to order him to follow her into battle. The woman who Caboose had been forced to disarm to stop her from doing something that all of them might regret.

But Caboose had disarmed her, and then they had gone after her, because, despite everything, she was one of them, whether she knew it or not. She and Church were _theirs_. And Tucker and Caboose had reached down and pulled Carolina onto her feet, and then, maybe Carolina figured that out herself.

Somewhere, somehow, along the way, the two of them had become friends.

Neither of them have a lot of those.

Tucker tries to laugh, but it gets caught in his throat and comes out as more of a sob, than anything else. “Yeah,” he finally says, the words choked. “Me too.”

Carolina sits next to him, and, hesitating, puts an arm around his shoulders. She’s warm and her arms are corded with muscle and she smells of detergent and wine and the fancy shampoo Donut buys her to help her preserve the dye in her hair, and it’s _great_.

Too tired to even make a joke, let alone flirt, Tucker sets the bottle down between his knees, leans against her, closes his eyes, and falls asleep.

* * *

 

_“I’m sorry Epsilon. The Meta captured her in the memory unit.”_

_The first time Tucker ever sees Washington, it’s in in the snow._

_He seems almost… normal, in that moment. The fighting between him and Tex and the Meta was done, Tex was already gone (Tucker would never get to say goodbye)._

_“She’ll be trapped in there_.”

_He and Epsilon were… something. Some sort of truce. Didn’t Epsilon hate that guy? Tucker thought someone had mentioned something about Epsilon shooting a laser at him, just like he’d done at fucking CT._

_“If I let her out… **you** have to come with me.”_

_A truce that involved Wash trying to fucking blackmail Church into coming with him to get Tex out of the fucking thing that he’d built, apparently. Tucker decided, right there on the spot, that he hated that guy._

_“Caboose, Tucker. Get in the base. See if you can find some tools.”_

_How had he even known his name? Then, there had been no time to dwell on it, because at the end of the day, even after she’d fucking kicked their asses and even after she’d ditched them and even after everything…_

_Tex was still his friend._

_Fighting the Meta is brutal and terrifying… bullets flying and all sorts of bullshit. Tucker stabs him in the chest. Sarge charges him with a shotgun._

_And by the time the dust settles…_

_Church is gone._

_And Tucker’s standing over the unconscious form of the guy responsible for it, sprawled out and bleeding on the snow._

_Tucker stares down at him, nothing but disgust rolling in his stomach._

_This guy shot Donut, and now Tex and Church are gone. **Both** Churches, even._

_Because of what? Tucker doesn’t even know. Something about prison._

_He nearly grabs Doc by the wrist, nearly tells Doc to fucking let the guy **die** , but he doesn’t, because he just realized Church fucking didn’t even say goodbye… again, and Caboose is calling Church’s name, softer and softer each time, and it’s nearly too much for Tucker to bear._

_Caboose finally wanders over, sniffing. He brightens up though, when he sees Wash._

_“Wash! You’re alive!”_

_And something about Caboose sounding **so fucking happy** to see this guy, when he can’t even stand Tucker half the time, even though it’s this guy’s fucking fault that Caboose’s **best friend** is dead…_

_Caboose kneels over the guy, sprawled out like a broken fucking rag doll as he is on the ice. “Tucker! He’s alive! Can we keep him?”_

_Tucker fucking can’t believe Caboose, sometimes._

_“Leave him! Caboose, get away from that guy! He killed Church, remember?”_

_It stops Caboose in his tracks._

_Blood spreads through the snow all around Washington, smearing it pink in places. Pink, like Donut, who’s dead because of him. The rest of it is just… red._

_“No, Church is… he’s just not here right now,” Caboose says, slowly, looking over his shoulder at that fucking memory unit. “And Washington can be our new friend while we wait for him!”_

_“Fine, he killed **Alpha**! And Donut!” Tucker yells, and he can feel dampness stinging at his eyes and his throat closing up, because his best friend is gone, and never coming back, and Tucker never got to say goodbye, and it’s all **too much**. “And Epsilon and Tex are gone now, and it’s his fault, Caboose! He’s fucking dangerous and he doesn’t care about us and… just…” His shoulders slump. “Caboose…” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Let’s just go home.”_

_Caboose stares at Washington for a while._

_The noise of a pelican fills the air, and Tucker looks up. All that noise, and explosions, have apparently given them an audience, and Tucker has even less desire to help Washington now. He has no idea how they’re going to get out of this, and he doesn’t have **time** to deal with anything else right now, let alone a fucking murderer._

_(Donut hadn’t even **done** anything to this guy. Donut had been with **him** , in the desert, away from all of this fucking Freelancer bullshit.)_

_“Okay Tucker,” Caboose says, and Tucker sighs with relief because, for once, Caboose is actually **listening** to him. _

_And so they walk away, and they leave Washington behind in the snow._

* * *

 

Caboose comes to visit after Carolina leaves the next morning. If Tucker had more energy, he might have made a walk-of-fame joke (walks-of-shame aren’t Carolina’s style, and Tucker’s not about to _shame_ anybody for having even hypothetical sex, _especially_ not hypothetical sex with _him_ ), but because he was drinking, he hadn’t taken the painkillers that Dr. Grey had given him, so he hurts _way_ too much to come up with a good punchline, let alone handle the retribution that she’d deal out for it.

They might be friends, but Carolina has a very low tolerance for pick-up lines. At least it’s all in good fun these days, rather than the time when she’d tried to shoot him. Although that might have been for eavesdropping and startling her as much as for the line.

So instead of seeing if he could finally phase Carolina, or even get up in search of breakfast, Tucker just lies down on his bed, staring at the stitches on his arm, and tries really hard not to feel sick.

Because Felix would have _killed him_ , there’s no doubt in Tucker’s mind about that. He’d whispered it in Tucker’s ear as he’d pressed the flat of the knife against his face, already covered in blood. Promises of how long it’d take, of what it’d feel like, of how he was going to send his body back to Caboose and Kimball and even _Junior_ in pieces.

_“I think I’ll shoot you in the spine. Can’t even run as I start to cut you up. Wouldn’t that be **fun**? Of course, if I don’t do it right, you could die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”_

His friends hadn’t known where he was. He’d been given up for dead by all official channels, even if Caboose and Carolina and Sarge and Grif and Simmons and Donut and Doc and—well, okay, Lopez might have given him up as dead, but honestly Tucker wouldn’t know one way or another, cuz he’d slept through high school Spanish—hadn’t believed it. There was no way they would have gotten there in time, and he would have _died_ there, in that operating theater…

But Washington had decided to save him, for a reason that Tucker can’t even begin to understand.

“Tucker?” Caboose says, very quietly.

“Hey Caboose,” Tucker says, trying to keep his voice cheerful. Caboose _knows_ that Tucker’s hurt, obviously, but that doesn’t mean Tucker has to remind him of it.

Caboose looks at him, very solemn and weirdly quiet.

“Tucker, you have been very stupid,” Caboose announces.

“Hey!” Tucker says. “It’s not _my_ fault I was tortured!”

“Noooo,” Caboose says, drawing out the word, like Tucker’s missing something _very_ obvious. “But you _have_ been telling Principal Kimball not to let me go on missions with you!”

Maybe it’s because of Caboose’s insistence on referring to Kimball as “principal,” but the only word that springs into Tucker’s mind in this moment is _tattle-tale_.

“Caboose,” Tucker starts to protest, but it’s too late, Caboose takes off his helmet, and _fuck_ , there are tears in his giant brown eyes and Tucker _hates that_ , hates when Caboose cries, it’s not _fair_ , they’re supposed to hate each other, that’s how it _goes_.

“Caboose! I just thought Washington might be there, and—” Tucker sighs. “You liked him.”

“Well, yes,” Caboose says, sitting down next to him. “But _now_ he’s not being very nice, and he is hurting people and he’s friends with Felix and Locus and you know I think they’re very bad influences because I really thought we were going to be friends, but you know what sometimes people aren’t your friends and… and sometimes that’s okay.” He pats Tucker’s shoulder. “Tucker, sometimes you are _very_ stupid.”

Tucker, still trying to follow Caboose’s sentence before that, blinks. “What did I do _now_?”

Caboose makes a scoffing sound. “Tucker. Tucker. _Tucker_. I’m supposed to make sure you don’t do stupid things. That is why we are a _team_! Blue team! Us and Church and Carolina and Tex but she’s gone now, and Grif’s sister, even though it is very rude of her not to be here right now. We are supposed to stick _together_. Because otherwise someone who is not me will get lost and I know Mom said we’re supposed to stay in one place when we get lost, but I think you did the right thing this time coming to find us.”

Tucker laughs, wincing as the motion of it pulls at the stitches in his side. “Okay, Caboose, I get it. No more leaving you behind.”

“Oh! Good. Because that was not fun.” Caboose pauses. “Felix is not very nice.”

“No. He’s not.”

Caboose stares at his hands. “Tucker… is it really my fault?”

“What?”

“Washington only shot Private Pastry because he went to prison and he says he only went to prison because I kept Church. And you only didn’t keep him because of that and then he went to jail again and then Felix and Locus let him out and now he’s hurting people again and—”

“Caboose!” Tucker is alarmed, because Caboose doesn’t even acknowledge things that _are_ his fault, like Church’s death back in Blood Gulch or blowing things up, or… fucking _anything_. “Caboose, _no_. Washington did those things because he _chose to_ , and it’s not our fucking fault.” Tucker banishes the sight of blood on the snow from behind his eyelids.

“It’s not.”

He’s not sure if he’s talking more to himself or to Caboose, but in the end, it doesn’t matter.

Tucker and Caboose had made their choices and made them a long time ago.

Washington had made his own.

And all of the choices have led them here, to Tucker covered in injuries, Caboose’s arms wrapped around his stomach, with the specter of Washington hanging over their heads.

* * *

 

In his nightmares, Washington doesn’t let him go.

The handcuffs come off, sure enough, but when Tucker stirs, when he moves too soon, Washington grabs him by the hair, bringing a knife to Tucker’s throat and _cutting_.

Or he does let him go, but he gives chase, through the strange and winding corridors of the base—far darker, and more twisting than the corridors had been in real life—and, just as Tucker throws open the impossibly heavy door to the base, as soon as he can see freedom and green grass and Caboose and Carolina in the distance, calling his name…

The bullet, in his dreams, goes through his spine, cutting his feet out from under him. In the nightmare, Tucker falls to the ground like a puppet released from its strings, pain shooting through his top half, while nothing but numbness fills his bottom half.

Washington shoots Tucker in the back, and he doesn’t even laugh, not like Felix would.

He just stares at Tucker, pale grey eyes surrounded by bruise like dark circles, scars stretched across his face. He doesn’t say a thing, sitting down on his haunches, tilting his head to one side as Tucker bleeds out.

Beneath Tucker, his blood stains the snow.

Tucker wakes up with his chest too tight to breathe, and he paces around the base, at least in part to prove to himself that he still _can_ , until Palomo sees him and starts asking him questions. As Tucker hurries back towards his room and his bed to escape, he wonders if Palomo was doing that on purpose.

* * *

 

It’s only a week later, when Grey has finally taken out the last of his stitches and given him the all-clear, that Tucker goes out on another mission—this one with Sarge to take back a pirate base.

It goes smoothly, and there’s no sign of Washington or Felix or Locus, and it’s almost enough to help Tucker shake off the strange, foreboding feeling that’s started to settle into him every time he leaves Armonia.

Washington kept him alive for a reason, and Tucker is increasingly terrified of what that reason _is_.

It’s weird, that Tucker’s so scared of him, when he’s not the creepy, silent enigma of Locus, or the manic, vindictive cruelty of Felix. Wash somehow seems to straddle the line between the two mercenaries. More personal than Locus, more contained than Felix, and all the while with his eyes focused on Tucker, not because he’s interesting or pretty or irritating or whatever other form of bullshit that Felix is spouting off this week, but because of something that Tucker _did_.

Tucker pulled Caboose away from him, explicitly refused the Freelancer shelter and freedom when the guy felt that he was owed it, and for that, Washington wants him dead.

Except he doesn’t.

Except, he’d let Tucker go.

Tucker can’t stop rolling that fact around his head, hoping, somehow, that if he does it enough, the edges will wear away, and reveal some sort of fucking _answer_. It had worked with trying to figure out what was up with Church, had worked with the puzzle that was Red versus Blue…

But Washington… Tucker can’t seem to puzzle out Washington, no matter how hard he tries.

* * *

 

Tucker goes with Grey to the alien tower to investigate things, and decides to dick around with his sword for a bit to try to take his mind of Washington.

And then, because Tucker’s life is a fucking gigantic joke with him as the punchline, he accidentally summons the voice of alien Jesus (well okay, another alien Jesus, because to him, alien Jesus will always be Junior, and _no_ , he wasn’t a fucking virgin, shut up Grif, that’s not the _point_ ), and they go off on _another_ adventure to find some sort of fucking “true warrior” portal.

Tucker jumps in, because, fuck it. He’s got the sword, he’s a fucking war hero, why the hell not?

_Caboose finally wanders over, sniffing. He brightens up though, when he sees Wash._

_“Wash! You’re alive!”_

_… fuck, it’s kind of nice to see Caboose **happy** , for once._

_Caboose kneels over the guy, sprawled out like a broken fucking rag doll as he is on the ice. “Tucker! He’s alive! Can we keep him?”_

_“Caboose…” Tucker groans._

_“Can we keep him? Can we keep him?” Caboose is practically fucking **bouncing** as he kneels over Washington, getting in the way of Doc checking his pulse. And the guy **had** helped them fight the Meta…_

_“… fuck it. Anyone have any spray paint?”_

_No one’s ever accused Tucker of being **smart** , okay? And whatever, the guy’s half-dead. He might just keel over on his own, and at least Caboose will be happy._

_They’re only just finished swapping the armors and getting Wash upright and instructing him on what to say, when the pelican arrives._

_“I gotta hand it to you. Killing one of these agents would be tough. But three? And this guy...” The guy stops and examines Epsilon’s robot body, wearing Washington’s armor. For a second, Tucker thinks the ruse is about to fall apart, but the guy just shrugs. “The Chairman will not be happy he's dead. I think he wanted to debrief him personally. Oh well.”_

_“Yeah...” Tucker says, doing his best to play it cool._

_“Yeah, that's too bad,” Caboose adds, with that weirdly earnest way of his that makes Tucker wonder if he has, in fact, already forgotten that Wash isn’t actually dead._

_“Well, be sure to let him know we're sorry.”_

_… okay, nobody had told Tucker that the Freelancer was a fucking **little shit**._

_“Whatever. You're free to go. If we need you, we know where to find you.”_

_Dick._

_“Why are you guys helping me?” Washington demands, just like he had earlier, when they’d been getting him onto his feet._

_“You helped us, Wash. It only makes sense.” Okay Caboose. Sure._

_“Yeah, plus we needed to even the teams. And I couldn't put up with Caboose constantly asking “Can we keep him? Can we keep him?”” Tucker says, more lightly than he feels. Oh, this is totally a **terrible** idea._

_“… For whatever it's worth... Thanks.”_

Tucker falls out of the portal after that, a strange feeling in his stomach.  

When Carolina asks him what he saw, he doesn’t tell her.

Caboose manages to figure things out, because of _course_ he does, and he introduces them to a fucking alien A.I. named _Santa_ , and they learn about a second key/sword and…

That’s when the pirates attack.

“Another key, huh?” The head pirate asks. She’s a woman, but Tucker doesn’t think he’s ever seen her before. “Ooh, Felix will like _this_. He’s not happy he let you get away, pretty.” She waves at Tucker, and he honestly doesn’t know how to deal with being flirted by a pirate who’s actively trying to kill him. “Well, okay, I’ll go let the boys know about this.”

She turns to one of the other pirates. “Shoot them as soon as that shield goes down! Felix wants the pretty one alive, but honestly… don’t bother. Locus will back me up on this.”

“Yes, Chrissie, ma’am.”

Chrissie, which is the worst fucking name _ever_ for an evil pirate, and Tucker will go to his grave, possibly literally, because they might be about to die, thinking this.

“You really think four people are enough to stop us?” Carolina demands, her arms outstretched, holding up the shield.

“Eh, maybe not, but that little firebug of yours only can run that thing for so long,” Chrissie says with a shrug. “Have fun, kiddos!” She waves jauntily at them—or maybe the other pirates?—and then walks off. As she walks away, Tucker can hear her start to talk into her radio.

“Hey Wash, got some good news for you! Get Felix and Locus on the line, will you?”

There’s about another thirty seconds when Tucker thinks they’re about to die, but Grey and Freckles pull through…

And now, all they have to do, is fucking race Washington, Felix, and Locus, to a fucking mountain, and get the second key before they do.

Ah, fuckberries. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: an ending. 
> 
> Come chat with me over @secretlystephaniebrown, or drop me a line in the comments! Hope you all enjoyed!


	5. ... And in the End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end of things! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's read, commented, left a kudos, or reblogged or liked on Tumblr! This has been a very fun journey, and I hope you all had nearly as much fun as I did! 
> 
> One last special thanks to jomeimei421 for drawing the art that started it all, and sroloc_elbisivni for being a brilliant beta!

“Your turn, Wash,” Felix says, after he comes out of the true warrior test. Something about Felix is jittery, more manic than usual, after that. Locus is silent, pensive, and preoccupied, far too busy talking to Chrissie about setting up the trap to pay attention to them.

“Not a chance,” Wash says. He’s seen the men come out, terrified out of their minds, having lived their worst nightmares.

Wash’s nightmares are a lot worse than any of theirs.

Felix laughs, and Wash’s skin crawls. He reaches for his knives on instinct, and barely manages to stop himself from doing something truly, dangerously stupid.

“I wasn’t asking.”

There’s the thing about Felix that Wash understands. Felix doesn’t _respect_ people, at least not in the way that people normally mean. Everyone, everything, is disposable to him. The closest thing to respect is whatever Locus has.

Wash is a tool, a pawn in Felix’s games.

And, ever since Tucker’s escape…

Wash feels like he’s become just slightly more disposable of one.

But being shoved, head first, into the bright, alien light, is still unexpected.

_He’s standing in the snow, looking down at a body wearing his armor._

_Someone grabs his elbow and he looks down, into the helmet of Lavernius Tucker, the man who he barely knows, but who has, for reasons that Wash can’t begin to understand, decided to save him._

_“Focus,” Private Tucker hisses. He’s not that tall, being shorter than Wash, shorter than Caboose, shorter than Epsilon’s body had been. But he somehow manages to radiate fierceness. “Don’t you fuck this up, okay?”_

_“Okay,” Wash says, trying to stay upright even though the edges of his vision are beginning to blur with pain. His ribs are probably broken. Blood loss has made his head too light, and Doc hasn’t had much time to help him, not while they’d been busing getting the armor switched._

_They make it through the inspection, they make it into the Warthogs, and they leave Epsilon’s body behind in the snow, for the soldier’s to deal with, and Wash tries not to collapse the second he gets into the back of the warthog._

_Tucker takes off his helmet, turning around to face Wash. His features are handsome, his skin dark, his hair long, and his mouth a thin, dangerous line._

_“Don’t make me regret this, okay?”_

_“I won’t,” Wash promises, one part earnestness, one part desperation, and one part something that Wash can’t even begin to name. “You won’t regret this.”_

_“I better not,” Tucker says, putting his helmet back on and turning his attention back to the road._

_He doesn’t say what will happen if Tucker **does** regret this, but Wash can fill in the blanks well enough. Prison, a bullet in the back of the head, or even just killing him in his sleep…_

_Wash has earned that, he realizes with a horrible shudder. He doesn’t know much about Tucker, and the man doubtlessly knows little about him, but Tucker, the leader of Blue Team, owes him nothing. He has given Wash this second chance as a favor to Caboose. He captured Simmons, he held Doc hostage, and he shot—the pink one._

_He doesn’t even know the pink one’s name. He thinks Simmons might have said it, but he can’t remember._

_Wash’s fate rests solely in Lavernius Tucker’s hands._

_For days, Wash is paralyzed by fear, trying to stay out of Tucker’s way, trying to be **useful**. He almost misses the Leaderboard, because at least **then** he had been given concrete evidence of his use, his worth, rather than trying to read a man he barely knows, who wears armor all the time._

_The Reds fear him, dislike him, and resent him in turn. They’ve closed ranks, glaring out at the Blues with unconcealed hostility and rancor, and Wash hunches his shoulders and tries to make himself invisible as Tucker argues with the Reds over the radio about something specific that Wash can’t understand._

_“I’m sorry,” Wash tells Tucker._

_“Does it look like I care?” Tucker snaps. “Just… look, Caboose likes you. I’m not about to make him cry again.”_

_And don’t **you** go making him cry either, Tucker doesn’t say._

_Slowly, things change. Tucker wakes him up after a nightmare, and blocks the knife that Wash tries to bury in his shoulder without so much as a wince._

_“Dude, calm the fuck down, it’s **me**.”_

_For a moment, Wash doesn’t know him, thinks that the teal helmet is someone else, and he nearly calls out Carolina’s name, before he catches himself, and freezes._

_“Tucker—” he gasps, staring at the hand wrapped around his wrist, keeping his knife trapped. “I didn’t—”_

_Tucker releases him. “Dude, it’s fine. Do you think you’re the only one who gets nightmares?”_

_He’s not. Tucker has them too—screaming ones, ones that lead to him making horrifically sexual comments all the next day, and spilling anything he holds because his hands are shaking so hard. Caboose has ones that lead to him crying, soft, shuddering gasps, whispering a litany of names—his sisters, Wash learns—and not stopping until he manages to get them all right._

_“Tex had ones like yours,” Tucker admits, one night. His face is streaked with sweat, and his hands are trembling as he tries to wrap his fingers around his mug of hot cocoa. “She taught me to grab the wrist. She used a gun, not a knife, but she made me do it over and over again, until I was fast enough. I had to wake her up, because if Church did it, it was… bad. And if we let her sleep, it was worse.”_

_“Couldn’t you have… taken her gun?”_

_Tucker gave him a **look**. “It was **Tex**. She had guns all over Blue Base. I found one in Caboose’s **cereal** once.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Yeah,” Tucker says, and smiles at him—wide and brilliant, despite Tucker’s exhaustion. “She was an asshole like that.”_

_“You miss her,” Wash says, surprised._

_“She was my friend,” Tucker says. He passes Wash his own mug of cocoa._

_They sit in silence for a few moments, before Tucker looks up at him._

_“You know you are too, right?”_

_“What?”_

_“My friend.”_

_“… oh.”_

_Carolina comes back, after that. Carolina, scarred and green eyed, her hair still dyed bright red, and her entire body coiled so tightly with tension that Wash thinks that, one day, she’s going to lash out and bring down everything with her._

_It’s just like Freelancer._

_She hasn’t changed a bit in any way, except now, her devotion towards the Director, has turned around on its head._

_“Revenge, Wash,” she promises him, her hand extended. “For both of us.”_

_Wash reaches out and takes her hand._

_The Reds and the Blues tag along, into a series of wild twists and turns, until it brings them to a room, large and strange, with Epsilon’s hologram hovering over them all…_

_And Carolina raises a gun against Tucker’s head._

_“Well, what about **now**?”_

_“Carolina!” Wash says, but he doesn’t move. “That isn’t necessary!”_

_“We found the Director! We can make him pay! **This is what we wanted**!” Epsilon says. “Tucker, c’mon! He screwed you guys too!”_

_“Really? That’s what you guys want?” Tucker demands. He’s wearing his helmet, but Wash **knows** that he’s staring right at him. “Revenge? That’s the only thing that matters?”_

_“You don’t understand, Tucker,” Wash says, slowly, carefully, keeping half an eye on Carolina and the gun._

_“I don’t **want** to understand!” Tucker yells, striding forward despite the gun that’s still aimed at the back of his skull. “Fuck, Wash, I thought you were—I thought you were **better**! But you’re not, are you? You’re still that selfish fuck who shot Donut and got Church killed and—” He reaches out, as if to grab Wash—in a hug, or a strangle hold, or something else entirely._

_Wash raises his own gun, and Tucker falls silent._

_“Carolina,” Wash says, staring down the barrel of his gun at Tucker’s helmet, familiar and teal. He doesn’t **want** to shoot, but he will, if Tucker moves. He doesn’t want to, but it’s just a fact, and Tucker knows it too, from the way he’s staring at Wash, but keeps staying absolutely still. “We don’t need them. Let’s just go.”_

_“Right,” Carolina says, holstering her own pistol, still radiating fury._

_The two of them walk away, with Epsilon._

_“Fuck you, Washington,” Tucker whispers, at his back._

**_“So… they were right, not to trust you,” a voice, booming and alien, fills the world, and—_ **

Wash is standing in a blank, empty room, driven to his knees by the intense pressure of that voice.

“What—what was that?”

**“A different world… a world you wonder about. You wonder, what would have happened, had Lavernius Tucker chosen differently. I showed you what would have happened. I showed you that he was right, to leave you there. You are, and always will be… this.”**

“No,” Wash says. “You’re wrong about me.”

**“Am I?”**

Wash grits his teeth, his hands clenched into fists by his side. “You are. I’m—I’m not like that.”

**“I see no evidence of that.”**

“You don’t know me.”

**“I do. You saw it for yourself. You were offered everything you say you desired… and you threw it away, to seek satisfaction from the man who wronged you. As you throw away an entire world in the name of vengeance. You are _NOT WORTHY_.”**

Wash falls backwards, out of the portal, gasping for air, and he stares down at his own hands.

What does that… _thing_ know about him? He thinks, ignoring Felix’s laughter in the distance. There’s no way it could do what it says it can, reaching across worlds, and pulling that out.

Lavernius Tucker…

_“You killed Church! You tried to kill Donut! What, was I supposed to fucking drag you along just because Caboose liked you?”_

_“It’s clear bringing you along would have been a fucking **terrible** idea.”_

_“Bet you would have thrown the rest of us under a bus the first chance you’d have gotten. If you hadn’t killed us all in our sleep in a fit of Freelancer paranoia first, at least.”_

… had he been right?

There’s an ambush, today. An entire army, being led into a kill box. An army, that, according to everyone that Wash has ever talked to, includes _teenagers_.

And Wash is party to that. He’s been party to a lot, in his life, but this…

_“So shove the broody righteous hero attitude, cuz guess what? You’re the goddamn bad guy here.”_

Lavernius Tucker had been right about him, all along.

But that…

That doesn’t mean that whatever was in that portal was.

He can… there’s still time.

He can still change things.

Wash moves away from the portal and follows the rest of the pirates. He’s supposed to stay back, to prepare for a raid on Armonia.

That will be a good place to start, Wash decides.

He’s still trying to figure out how he’s going to manage to sabotage a mission that he’s leading without making himself a too obvious target for his own men, when Chrissie makes the call.

A tower that kills a planet… and a key that lets them do it.

Well.

It looks like Wash’s defection might have to be a little more obvious than he’d hoped.

* * *

 

The Temple of the Key is a craggy, strange building on a snow-covered mountain, and Wash immediately hates it when he gets there. There are cliffs, which are already awful, but there’s also snow, and the air outside is so cold that Wash can almost imagine he can feel it through his environmentally controlled armor.

“Any sign of them?” He asks one of the pirates, trying to ignore the prickles of memory poking around the edge of his mind.

“No sir,” Ross, one of the men who was here before the _Tartarus_ , replies. “But the Temple is fucking with our equipment, so we can’t be sure.”

“Fan out and secure the perimeter,” Wash says, switching out his pistol for his rifle. “Radio me if you spot them.”

“Yessir.”

The interior of the Temple is huge, in a way that Wash… isn’t used to. Interiors of buildings and ships are always… small. Even the Tartarus’s center, open for floors upon floors, had always felt claustrophobic. But here, the ceiling is a high arch, curved in such a way that every slightest sound is audible, and the sleek, steel ramps curve around the walls, hinting at a never-ending maze of rooms. The light is a strange greyish blue and… alien.

And there, in the center of the room, is the handle of a sword just like Tucker’s.

**“Do you truly think you are worthy?”**

Wash turns around, and gapes.

An alien being, made entirely of dark red light, stands in front of him, gazing down on him with contempt.

An artificial intelligence. An _alien_ artificial intelligence.

Wash really hates his life.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m worthy or not.” Wash turns his back to the A.I. and strides across the room to the sword.

**“You don’t believe it matters?”**

“No. What matters… is what I do next.” He crouches down, beside the hilt, which sits, like it has sat for probably hundreds if not thousands of years, before picking it up.

It feels… different, from Tucker’s sword. It’s still heavy, but the weight of it is different, and there is no feeling of _wrongness_ spreading outwards from his hand. Instead, he thinks he can feel the pattern of the grip changing in his hand, shifting itself to suit him, and when he raises it, it bursts to life in front of him, forming the familiar lines of a Sanghelli Blade.

He looks up, and the alien is gone.

Wash almost wonders if he’d imagined it, but he knows that it really doesn’t matter.

The sword is bound to him until he dies.

_“You really think the Chairman'll let you go?”_

A sword, which, in Felix or Locus’s hands, could easily spell the end to this entire planet.

_“Tell that to the sixteen year olds running around wearing armor.”_

Teenagers in an army, fighting a war… a war that Wash can’t even begin to comprehend.

_“You’re also willing to kill an entire goddamn planet just so you end up okay? Your freedom is worth that much, huh?”_

Wash is in this war, on the wrong side. He can’t deny that. Felix and Locus would do _anything_ to get their hands on this key. They will do _anything_ to kill off this planet and collect their paycheck.

But it’s not in their hands.

It’s in his.

Wash lowers his hand, and the blade flickers out.

He knows what he has to do next.

His radio pings, letting him know that Felix is trying to establish a connection. He’s on his way to join Wash, and he’s probably excited about getting his hands on the sword. He doesn’t know Wash already has it.

He doesn’t know what Wash is planning on doing next.

Wash takes a deep breath inside of his helmet, trying to appreciate the safety, the security, of his armor. Because, soon, he won’t have that.

He’s going back to prison after all.

He’s survived… everything, and in the end, it’s all for nothing.

He shakes his head, because if he dwells on that, he might change his mind. And he knows he can’t. He has to follow this through, has to face the consequences of his actions.

Lavernius Tucker might be irritating, but he was right about at least one thing.

Wash isn’t the good guy in this story.

He keeps walking through the Temple, out into the wide open, snow spotted mountaintop. He clips the sword to his side, like he’s seen Lavernius Tucker do, and it clicks into place, proving once and for all that ancient alien technology is a strange, indecipherable thing, that can somehow interact with modern human armor systems.

In the distance, he sees a Federal Army of Chorus pelican circling, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

Felix’s radio pings his again, but Wash still doesn’t open the channel. If he’s about to turn traitor, he doesn’t have to listen to Felix’s voice anymore, and he’s going to take full advantage of that.

Wash turns around, and there’s a sword at his throat.

“Washington,” Tucker says.

“Tucker.” Slowly, Wash raises his hands in the air, dropping his rifle.

Tucker stares at him, slowly, incredulously.

“I surrender,” Wash says, just to make sure he’s getting the point across.

“You expect me to believe that?” Tucker demands.

“Felix and Locus will kill everyone on this planet if they get this sword.” He watches as Tucker’s helmet twitches slightly, probably having only just noticed the sword clipped to Wash’s leg.

“And since when do you have a problem with that?” Tucker lowers his own sword. “Whatever happened to “We’re fighting an army, not a planet,” huh?”

“Are you _really_ going to argue with me about surrendering?” Wash demands, feeling a headache beginning to build.

For a moment, Wash thinks Tucker’s about to follow through on his earlier declarations, and just kill him right on the spot.

But then Carolina emerges over Tucker’s shoulder, keeping her gun trained right on him. Wash feels his heart speed up in his chest, and he does his best to not allow it to affect his stance, with his hands still held up in the air.

“He surrendered,” Tucker says. “Anyone got any handcuffs that aren’t pink and fuzzy?”

“You expect me to believe you _don’t_?” Carolina’s voice is tinged with affection in a way that completely throws Wash off. But her gun doesn’t waver from Wash’s helmet, aimed in such a way that Wash knows that one shot could put him down for good.

In his mind, Carolina has always been like she was during the project; stressed, competitive, and on the verge of collapse, just like the rest of them.

But, standing next to Tucker, the two of them unfathomably comfortable, Wash realizes, with a lurch, that she’s _changed_.

The vision the alien A.I. had provided had gotten it wrong, at least about Carolina. Carolina, standing here, _is_ different from Freelancer. She’s grown. She’s changed. She’s _happy_.

Envy sweeps through Wash, strong enough to choke him.

“Did you not just hear me say that mine are pink and fuzzy?” Tucker says. “Donut swapped them all out because he says that metal ones are a hazard in the bedroom.”

“What makes you think he didn’t get mine?”

“Because you’d have switched them back.”

Carolina lets out a soft laugh that freezes Wash in place. “Cover me.”

Tucker switches out his sword for his gun, and Wash is shoved against the side of the mountain, cuffed, and relieved of his weapons. Wash grits his teeth so tightly that they hurt as the cuffs close around his wrists, keeping them trapped behind his back, but he doesn’t protest.

Carolina attaches the sword to her own leg but leaves the rest of his weapons there in the snow, and Wash doesn’t say anything, even though he wants to.

“Move,” she says. “Epsilon’s jamming your radio, so don’t even try to call for help.”

But the shove against his back isn’t as harsh as Wash might have expected.

The two of them lead him into a tunnel, dark and damp and cramp.

Wash struggles to keep his breathing even. It’s not prison. He’d never been in his armor in prison. He’s not there… he’s not injured, he’s not at the crash site. He’s… he’s _fine_.

This is _fine_.

“Why did you do it?” Tucker demands, suddenly.

Wash can’t help but turn around to look at him, even though it means that Carolina’s rifle digs into his shoulder.

“Do what?” Wash asks, so focused on how close the ceiling of the cave feels that he doesn’t realize the obvious answer as to what Tucker’s talking about.

“What do you think, dude? You let me go. _Why_?”

Wash should say something poignant, something clever; maybe even try to convince them that he’d always planned on betraying Felix and Locus, and that was him trying to prove it to them, use it to try to help his own situation.

But he’s exhausted and trying to stave off the claustrophobia, so he just tells the truth.

“Felix was going to kill you.”

“… and you _care_?”

“Tucker,” Carolina says quietly. “Later.”

“No! Not later.” Tucker steps forward, and shoves Wash backwards. Wash stumbles, but manages to stay upright, his boots sinking further into the snow. “I want to know why the _fuck_ you’re changing your mind! You wanted to kill me, so why the fuck does it matter if Felix did it?”

“Because…” Wash’s breath is stuttering in his chest, and he feels like the ceiling above them is about to give, or maybe that’s just because he’s shaking so hard inside of his armor that absolutely nothing is standing still.

Nothing except the two figures in aqua armor in front of him, who aren’t even aiming their weapons at him anymore, just watching him.

“Wash, focus!” Carolina demands, her voice cutting through the haze in his head.

The world stops spinning, and Wash realizes he’s leaning against the wall of the tunnel, having a fucking panic attack.

“ _Why_?” Tucker demands again.

“Tucker,” Carolina growls in warning, but Wash looks over her shoulder, right at Tucker.

“You were right,” Wash whispers, his throat dry. “I was just… following orders.”

“And that makes it _okay_?”

“No.” Wash tries to stand up straight, and stumbles. Carolina catches him by the elbow, more gently than she has to.

More gently than Wash deserves, that’s for sure.

“You want a choice again,” Carolina says, softly. He can’t see her expression, but her grip on his arm is supporting, not gripping.

“Yes,” Wash says. “I’m… you were right. What Charon is doing is wrong, and I was helping them, and I… I just wanted to not go back to prison.” He swallows. “I’m a soldier. Not a killer. Or at least… I’m supposed to be.”

Carolina and Tucker look at each other. And, in a flash of light, Epsilon pops into view.

“Well, what do you think?” Carolina says.

“Eh, good enough for me,” Epsilon says, his avatar shrugging.

“Kimball’s not going to like this,” Carolina says, sounding amused.

“Oh, and you think Doyle _will_?” Tucker snickers.

“Eh, it’ll be good for them to agree on something,” Epsilon disappears and reappears closer to Tucker.

“That’s true! And we can probably sell Kimball on probation!” Tucker nods, enthusiastically.   

“What?” Wash asks, not sure if he’s at all following.

Carolina turns away from him. “Grif, prep the Pelican, we’re going right for the Communication Tower.”

_“What? You got it! Holy **shit** , you’ve got a sword now?”_

“Noooot exactly,” Epsilon says, sounding way too amused about all of this.   

“I don’t understand,” Wash says, still dizzy with adrenaline and confusion, as Tucker takes a step towards him.

The handcuffs fall into the snow, and vanish, too heavy to stay above the surface.

“Man, you Freelancers are kind of dumb sometimes, aren’t you?” Tucker says. “Welcome to Blue Team, Washington. If you fuck this up, Kimball will probably kill you before I can, but hey.”

“What? Why? After… after _everything_ I did? You’re just… letting me go?”

“No, we’re letting you join the team! Dude, don’t you pay attention?”

“That makes _no sense_!”

“Look dude. You’ve got an alien sword that’s almost as cool as mine, we’re _super_ outnumbered, you’ve decided to be less of a dick, and I already apparently owe you my goddamn life.”

“A second chance, Wash,” Carolina says, turning to face him. “Don’t… question if you deserve it or not too hard.”

“You can’t _possibly_ be okay with this,” Wash says, staring at Tucker.

Tucker suddenly looks serious.

“Look, I’m not saying we’re buddies or best friends or anything like that dude, don’t get the wrong idea. But hey, you _kiiiiind_ of only went to prison cuz we bailed on you, and I mean, Felix probably would’ve fucking killed you if you’d said no to helping him out, and you didn’t hand over the weapon that’d let them kill an entire planet.” He shrugs. “That counts for like, something.”

“Come on,” Carolina says. “The others are waiting for us.”

“Bet Caboose is going to _love_ this,” Tucker says. “C’mon, Washington.”

He turns away from Wash, and keeps walking, out of the tunnel, leaving his back completely exposed.

Wash stares after him a moment, completely thrown off balance by all of this.

But, tentatively, he puts one foot in front of the other, and moves out of the tunnel, following Tucker and Carolina into the harsh, blinding light of day.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! If you've liked this fic, requests are open over on my Tumblr, @[secretlystephaniebrown](http://secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com/)!


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